


Tell me something I don't know

by EleanorC



Category: South Park
Genre: Alcohol, F/M, Implied Sexual Content, Revenge Plot, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-10
Updated: 2018-08-12
Packaged: 2019-03-29 16:18:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 29,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13930713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EleanorC/pseuds/EleanorC
Summary: Elayne Cartman hates her cousin Eric with a passion. So when she runs into the perfect opportunity for petty revenge, she simply has to act on it, right?





	1. Blank face

“Statistics? You are doing statistics in our first semester?” Elayne's roommate looked at her, as if she had grown a second head. “Your first semester of university, and you are taking something as boring as statistics?”

Elayne tucked a strand of light brown hair behind her ear and looked down at the list of units again. “Yeah, I mean; sure, it's probably boring as hell, but I will need to do it at some point, might as well get it out of the way.”

If she was being honest, most of the units she was taking this semester were mandatory units. Elayne believed that if there’s something you must do, you might as well do it as soon as possible to get it out of your way.

“But, that has got to be _the_ most boring unit out of all the mandatory ones.” Her blonde roommate complained. Elayne could tell from the roots of her bottle blond hair that, unlike Elayne, Katy was exactly the type to procrastinate.

Elayne's smile turned slightly evil. “Which is _exactly_ why it’s the one with the highest chance of finding upperclassmen.” As she finally looked Katy in the eye, she wiggled her eyebrows. In truth, the last time she hooked up with a classmate had been a clear mistake, but it wouldn’t do her reputation any good if she’d appear all eager to get the boring classes out of the way. Totally lame.

Elayne sighed as she looked around the campus park. “You know, if you had told me last year I would be accepted into Stanford, I wouldn’t have believed it.”

“What, Ivy-plus not good enough for you?” Katy dead-panned.

“More like, I didn’t expect to get accepted here.” No. that wasn’t true. Elayne just hadn’t expected to get enough of a scholarship to be able to go here.

“Really? I had you pegged for the type that knew where she was going from age 12.”

Elayne smiled, but she knew it would just make her look sadder. “Me too.”

“What?”

“I always assumed I’d be going to the university of Denver. I took all the advanced classes, yet it never even occurred to me I could shoot higher than the university at home.”

“So, what changed?” Katy asked.

“Huh?”

Katy raised one perfectly shaped, dark eyebrow. “Well, if it never occurred to you that this was even an option, what changed to make you apply here.” Damn, she was more perceptive than Elayne was giving her credit for.

 “In the last year something happened in my social circle that made me want to get as far away as possible from Denver as I could afford. I applied to lots of universities, and added Stanford on a whim, but I didn’t expect them to offer me enough money to make it possible.”

“Wait, you are here on a scholarship?”

A proud smile found its way onto Elayne’s face this time.

“Yeah.”

“What kind?”

“Sports, I play tennis.”

“Really? You keep surprising me.” Katy looked impressed.

“We have known each other for, what, a week? Of course I keep surprising you.”

After a short pause Elayne added; “I mean it’s not like all I ever do is sleep around, despite the impression I may have caused during our first few nights here.”

Katy snorted at that; Elayne hadn’t slept in their shared dorm apartment until the 4th night they lived in it.

Elayne stood up and dusted off her pants. “I'm gonna go get some coffee, you coming?” She asked, feeling she had sufficiently distracted Katy from the topic of her university choice.

She was wrong.

As they left the park Katy suddenly spoke up.

“I will want to hear what is was that drove you from Denver, you know.” She said softly.

Elayne turned sharply to tell Katy that it was none of her business but stalled when she saw Katy’s concerned look. They stared at each other for a few seconds before Katy cleared her throat and looked away.

“I mean, if you want to talk about it, of course.”

And so, twenty minutes later in one of the coffee shops on campus, Elayne found herself talking while staring into a mug of overpriced coffee. Just like that.

About her life. About how she felt about most of her family and by extension, how she felt about herself. But most of all, she found herself talking about her cousin, who had made her flee her home.

Why the hell did she have to end up with a psychology major as roommate?

-

When Elayne entered the lecture hall for her first statistics class, her gaze swept over the room, scanning for familiar faces from the introduction activities. She was not surprised when she didn’t see any of her new friends. She did see a guy that somehow triggered her, but the memory was so vague, she couldn’t place it. He had curly red hair and was wearing an orange button up over a black T-shirt with dark green pants. Despite promising herself not to hook up with any classmate, Elayne found herself thinking he looked _hot._

She scanned the room once more, this time to locate a good seat, only to conclude the only good one available was right next to the ginger, or maybe that’s just what she told herself.

She silently approached the seat next to him and pulled the chair slightly backward, raising an eyebrow in question as he looked up at her.

He smiled slightly and nodded.

Elayne put on her best smile. “Thanks,” She offered her hand, intending to introduce herself, but she got interrupted by his phone ringing. She zoned his conversation on the phone out as she got her brand-new laptop set up for taking notes and looked up the lecture slides for the day. At some point her curiosity got the better of her and she started to listen in.

“No dude, I get that there is no way Fatass transferred here, but when I saw that name-code on the register for this class I thought I was going to have an aneurism.” He rattled off, sounding kind of stressed. She could hear a soothing voice on the other side of the phone but couldn’t make out what was being said. A boyfriend maybe? That would be a shame.

“Yeah, I know, I know,” The ginger continued. “You’re right, I really need to get over this. I’ll talk to you later, Stan, class is starting soon.” Another long answer from the other side as Elayne checked her watch.

It was fifteen more minutes till class started.

There were only five left before they really did finish the conversation.

“Yeah, yeah. I am eating enough, stop trying to be my mom, Stan, my own is good enough at it. Bye.”

Elayne was just considering starting a conversation when he beat her to it.

“Sorry about that, he can be kind of overprotective.” He looked kind of sheepish as he said it, as if he didn’t really know himself why he was apologizing.

Elayne smiled, deciding to put a feeler out right away. “Don’t worry about it, we’ve all had a boyfriend like that at some point.”

The effect was instantaneous: His eyes went wide and he put both his hands up. “No, no, no, he’s just my best friend.”

Elayne’s smile spread. “Oh, okay, not that it would have been a bad thing.” Then she put out her hand a second time. “I’m Elayne, nice to meet you.” This time he took it.

“Kyle.” Kyle? Now that was a name she had heard many times, over the past years. Her eyes drifted up to his red curls and she wondered if…. But no, it couldn’t be, right?

Right.

Before she could say anything else the professor walked in and started the first lecture but all Elayne could think about was the red-head sitting next to her. She noticed he had put his contact information on all his notebooks.

Kyle Broflovksi, yep that was the name, all right. Suddenly Elayne realised why he seemed so familiar. She had met him that one Christmas her cousin had taken his friends along for the family celebration. Her cousin hated this guy’s guts. His Jew guts, she suddenly, and randomly, remembered.

Oh, this had potential.

For months, she had tried to get back at Eric for what he had made her go through in her last year of high school. But she had never really found a scheme that was likely to hurt Eric in any meaningful way. 

And it had to be meaningful.

As the professor droned on about what turned out to be one of those standard _first lecture of the semester, this is how it works in this class_ -lectures that no one pays attention to, except for a certain ginger sitting next to her, Elayne started sketching out a rough plan. This was the type of opportunity you just didn’t pass up. When class ended, Elayne turned to Kyle again.

“So, I think we were introducing ourselves.” Kyle looked at her questioningly. “You know, before we got so rudely interrupted by the lecture.”

It got her the hint of a smile.

“I guess we were.”

“So, Kyle, tell me something I don’t know.” She whispered conspiratorially, wiggling her eyebrows.

He just gave her a blank look, “What?”

“What do you mean, what?” She asked, trying to sound innocent.

“What kind of question is that, you barely know anything about me.”

“That’s kind of the point, anything is fine.”

“Anything?” Kyle kind of looked as if she was nuts.

“Anything, doesn’t even have to be about you. There are lots of things I don’t know.”

“Like what?”

“Where my next lecture hall is.” Not true, but Kyle didn’t need to know that.

The point was that she did get him to show her. “Where do you need to go?” He asked, giving her that hint of a smile again.

“Uhm.” Elayne opened her planner and read the lecture hall she needed to go for chemistry 101 out loud.

When he didn’t reply, she looked up to see him study her. Gears were turning behind those intelligent green eyes.

Shit, did she screw up already?

“You are that one brave first-year that chose to do statistics right away.” 

“What?”

“Dr. Richards was saying during the lecture that there was a first-year taking this class, that’s you.” Kyle explained.

“Oh.”  Elayne realised she had zoned out more than she thought during the lecture if she had missed that. “Yeah, that’s me. Brave little Elayne.”

It got her that hint of a smile again, and Elayne decided then and there it was an absolute necessity to get him to smile for real.

“So, are you coming or not?” Kyle asked as he got up and heaved his backpack into his shoulder.

“Huh?” She really needed to get her head in the game and stop getting distracted by his not-quite smiles.

“I was showing you where your next class is, remember?” Kyle told her blankly. “Dr. Green doesn’t appreciate the art of being fashionably late.”

“You did a unit with her?”

“Chemistry 101, actually, just like you.”

What?

“How did you even know I am doing chem 101?” Elayne asked as she followed Kyle out of the lecture hall and took a right.

“You have the book for it in your bag.” This guy was seriously perceptive, as well. That could be dangerous for her plan.

“Fair enough.”

Kyle did end up showing Elayne a more efficient way to get to her destination. She also learned that he was indeed from South Park, that his major was pre-law, but that he dabbled in chemistry quite a bit, that most of his friends went to the university of Denver, and that he really enjoyed escaping from the cold climate.

She also noticed that when he talked about his friends, he left Eric out of the group.

Elayne carefully skirted around information about herself, making sure not to let Kyle in on anything other than current facts.

When they got to the proper lecture hall, Elayne handed Kyle her phone, with a new contact page open.

“What am I supposed to do with this?” He asked, before even looking at the screen.

“Add yourself, in case I get lost or something.” Elayne wiggled her eyebrows. “You can be my knight in shining armour.”

When that earned her yet another blank look, Elayne thought he wasn’t going to humour her, but then he looked down and started typing in his contact info anyway.

Well, that could be considered a win, at least.

-

“You are going to do what?” Katy asked, sounding mildly offended just at the idea of it.

“I am going to get close to one of Eric’s friends, who studies here, just to annoy Eric.”

“By ‘getting close’ you mean you are going to try to get into his pants?” Katy asked, complete with air quotes.

“No, I mean that I will get him to want to get into mine.”

“There’s a difference?”

“Yep.”

“And you think this is a good idea, why?”

“Because this is the first viable idea I’ve had when it comes to hurting Eric.”

Katy just heaved a giant sigh at that. It’s not that Elayne didn’t get what Katy was trying to say; that this was exactly the kind of behaviour Elayne detested in her family. But that didn’t change the fact that she had seen Eric’s feelings get hurt on only one occasion, and the opportunity placed in front of her, now, was far too alike that past event to pass up on.

Even if she knew in advance that she would hate herself for using an innocent person to get back at Eric, later. She just had to do it, it was a matter of pride.

“Look, if you really want to continue this plan, I can’t stop you, but just remember that I think this is all a really bad idea.”

Elayne smiled at that. At first, she had thought Katy was one of those overly popular, overly naïve cheerleader types. She had been wrong about everything except the cheerleader part. Katy turned out to be perceptive, intelligent and didn’t take shit from Elayne.

Usually, people who matched her own dominant trait would infuriate Elayne and cause her to resort to classic, Cartman-style behaviour; to make them submit to her authority, but for some reason, Katy made her want to repress those instinctual habits, instead. One of the reasons Elayne had moved away from her extended family was because she wanted to change herself and found it hard to do so while living in the same house as the worst member of the Cartman family.

There were many signals that this whole thing was a bad idea. Like the fact that Katy was so strongly against this, or that Elayne thought Kyle was hot, or that, no matter what she told herself, what she really wanted when flirting with him, was to see his smile.

-

The next time Elayne saw Kyle was at the campus sports centre. He was standing outside the door, digging through his bag. She walked up to him and whispered.

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

Kyle jumped and when he looked at her, Elayne knew he saw a very mischievous face.

“Will this be a thing now?”

“Yup, so tell me something I don’t know.”

Was it her, or did he not look very good?

“I play basketball.” She did know that, but Elayne smiled anyway. “You?”

“Tennis.” Elayne said pointing at the racket bag strapped to her back with her thumb.

“Cool.” Kyle went back to digging through his bag, frowning.

“So watcha looking for in there?”

Kyle looked at her for a second, seemingly evaluating her before sighing and answering: “My apple juice. I have diabetes, so I usually have some juice with me whenever I go to practice. My sugar is a bit low right now, but I seem to have forgotten my back-up juice.”

Right, she remembered something about a stolen kidney. Elayne didn’t say anything but started digging around in her bag until she found a half-used pack of Dextrose tablets. She pulled it out and offered it to Kyle.

“Would this help you?” 

Kyle smiled and took the tablets from her immediately. Elayne staggered for little from the sudden and unexpected smile.

“That’s perfect actually. Thanks.” He took two tablets and tried to hand the rest back to Elayne, who blinked out of her smile induced daze.

“Nah, keep it. Just in case.” Then she leaned in. “You can thank me properly some other time.” She wiggled her eyebrows and was met with another blank look as she waved and turned to enter the building.

No matter. She was expecting that blank face by now, and either way, she finally got him to smile.

-

[11:00 – To Kyle Broflovski] _I’m lost._

Elayne looked back at the computer screen with a sigh; who had made this digital catalogue system anyway? It was already virtually impossible to find what you were looking for in the library, since there didn’t seem to be a logical sorting system to the shelves and the badly set-up search engine didn’t help at all. Just as Elayne tried another string of terms to find the sort of book she was looking for, her phone vibrated.

Good, he was a prompt replier.

[11:01 – From Kyle Broflovksi] _I didn’t think you were the type to get lost, where are you trying to go?_

Of course he would take it as such. Elayne chuckled a bit and quickly typed out a follow up.

[11:03 – To Kyle Broflovksi] _Not literally. In a digital sense, I guess._

[11:03 – To Kyle Broflovski] _The online catalogue for the library is confusing me._

Seriously though, did he have to enter his name in such a boring way? Time to change it.

Just after Elayne finished editing Kyle’s name, she received a new message.

[11:05 – From Kyle <3] _Are you using your own laptop?_

[11:06 – To Kyle <3] _No, the library pc. Should I be?_

[11:08 – From Kyle <3] _Try it on your own laptop, but make sure you are on the general university wifi, not on the library one._

It worked, books that weren’t showing up earlier showed up now.

[11:17 – To Kyle <3] _My hero. <3_

[11:17 – To Kyle <3] _Why didn’t it work on the library pc’s?_

[11:19 – From Kyle <3] _The library pc’s only show the books on the floor of the Library you are on at that moment. Very annoying. Not sure why they don’t change it._

[11:20 – To Kyle <3] _Ah ok. Thanks anyways. :)_

[11:22 – From Kyle <3] _No problem._

From that point on, Elayne figured it would be alright to send messages to Kyle randomly. She asked where to get the best coffee on campus, if there was a good spot for studying that wasn’t the library, whether a certain book was worth reading. She asked if he had a Netflix account, and what he liked to watch.

At first, he answered hesitantly, but when Elayne kept asking questions and seemed genuinely interested in his advice, he started replying more readily. He told her of his favourite books, of how he travelled to the rainforest multiple times and that he was writing for the campus newspaper. Elayne already knew some of the things he was telling her, but she soaked it up anyway. It felt so different hearing familiar stories from another perspective.

It wasn’t fulfilling though, especially since Elayne couldn’t see Kyle’s reactions to her flirtier messages.

-

The third time they met, Kyle was ready for her. It was their second statistics lecture and Elayne slid into the seat next to Kyle whispering.

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

“In 2015, more people died by accident while trying to take a selfie than by shark attacks.”

“Seriously?”

“Yup.”

“Did you look that up just for me?” Elayne put on her best smirk.

Kyle just looked at her blankly again, “What?”

“Well, it came out so fast, you must have prepared that little fact in advance, right?” Elayne looked away to get her stuff out of her bag. “I was just wondering if you actually put in the effort to find something interesting to share.”

“Was I not supposed to?”

“It’s a surprise,” Elayne leaned in a bit closer and added in a whisper. “But not an unpleasant one.”

As she leaned back to her own seat Kyle cleared his throat and looked at Dr Richards entering the lecture hall.

Still no reaction then. No matter, Elayne had plenty of time.

Though Kyle hadn’t initiated any of their contact yet, he did surprise her at the end of lecture. Elayne was stuffing her laptop into her bag, her mind already on lunch when Kyle spoke up. “Hey, Elayne?”

Elayne turned to see Kyle standing, looking down at her, bag already on his shoulder. Elayne wouldn’t exactly describe him as very tall, he was only a few inches longer than her, but like this he did seem like it. “Want to do the research assignment together?”

Elayne didn’t even think about it before answering with an upbeat, “Sure!”.

The left corner of Kyle’s mouth twitched up in that semi-smile way that Elayne was quickly getting used to.

“Cool.” He said.

Scratch that, she was getting addicted to it.

Elayne happily went back to packing her bag but Kyle wasn’t done yet.

“So, when do you have time to work on it?” He asked just as Elayne zipped her backpack close.

Of course, he wasn’t a freshman, and she didn’t have a clue what the rest of his schedule looked like. Elayne stood up as she thought about it, but Kyle interrupted her once again.

“I mean, you don’t have to come up with a time right away, you can just link me your schedule or something.”

“Actually, I have a free afternoon right now and I was going for lunch.” Elayne looked to her right as Kyle fell in step next to her. “Maybe we can compare our schedules over lunch?”

Elayne hadn’t really expected him to agree but he did, after informing her that they would have to stay on campus since he did have lectures in the afternoon. So, they went to the cafeteria, where Kyle eyed her small Caesar salad critically.

“Is that all you’re getting?”

“Yeah?”

“We aren’t in high school anymore, you know. You don’t have to be a certain size or anything.”

Elayne flushed, both because of the sentiment and because he was assuming things.

“No, I play high level College Tennis and to keep my scholarship I have to keep in shape.” The moment it came out, she realised it sounded more defensive than she intended. Kyle’s face showed it too and Elayne heaved a big sigh.

“Sorry, that came out wrong.” She tried to look apologetic. “It’s true that I have to pay attention to what I eat, though.” They sat down at a table near a window. Elayne pulled a plastic box with grilled chicken out and wiggled it in Kyle’s direction. “Grilled chicken just gets really old, you know.”

She wasn’t sure whether it was the extra explanation or the extra food, but Kyle looked relieved at that. “Yeah, I know what you mean, my whole life the adults around me were always freaking out about my diet because of the diabetes. It only got worse when I started playing basketball more seriously.”

Elayne stabbed a piece of chicken with her fork and pulled her planner out of her bag with her other hand.

“You use a paper planner? I though all of us pesky millennials used digital ones.”

“I guess I am just old fashioned.” Elayne answered vaguely as Kyle pulled out his phone and opened his online planner.

“So, let’s plan our first date, lover boy.” She said with her signature eye-brow wiggle.

Another blank stare and silence. At least she would have more chances to flirt from now on. Over the last week, Elayne had started to think that maybe he just didn’t realise that what she was doing was flirting. Maybe he was one of those dense people that just didn’t know flirting if it hit him square in the face with a baseball bat. No matter, she would just have to exercise patience.

It wasn’t until she was walking back towards her dorm that she realised she had made a mistake. Assignments meant cover sheets. Cover sheets meant full names and student numbers. She couldn’t let Kyle know her last name. She mulled it over all the way to her dorm, until she stood at the door staring at her plate.

**Elayne Car & Katy Daniels. **

Right, the university had somehow taken the name she entered tennis-contests in as her application name. She had the form to rectify it on her desk, filled out and ready to go. Maybe she could just leave it like this?

The thought that Kyle would eventually find out about who her cousin was, tried to make its way into her conscience, but she pushed it away;

she would cross that bridge when the time came. 

It turned out that working with Kyle was an experience in and of itself. He was intelligent, precise and didn’t procrastinate as much as she had feared. He tolerated her jokes as they were working, sometimes cracking that pseudo smile, and even started joking himself after a while.

Over the next couple of weeks, they fell into an easy routine. ‘Tell me something I don’t know’ turned into a makeshift game. Every time they met, Elayne would ask that same question. Usually the bits of information Kyle came up with were known to Elayne, but sometimes she learned something new. However, when his offering was known to her, she would continue to nag at him for something personal instead. The game became more and more outrageous as Kyle took on the challenge of finding things Elayne didn’t know. They went from history to science to politics and entertainment.

One thing didn’t change though. Every time Elayne said anything remotely flirty, Kyle would just look at her blankly.

 


	2. Temper

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Elayne grinned as she walked up to where Kyle was sitting in the group project area of the library, two take-away coffee’s already at the table. To her surprise, Kyle grinned back.

“You’ll like this one,” he started, smug look on his face, “according to DNA profiling, King Tut’s parents where either brother and sister or first cousins.”

Eric popped into Elayne’s head and her face twisted in disgust, “Dude, gross.” Then she grinned, “Try again.”

“Seriously?” Kyle looked sceptic.

“Yeah; something like that? Hard to forget.” Elayne dropped into the chair beside Kyle and pulled out her laptop to start setting it up, “Try again.”

“My mom made me take violin lessons until I told her it interfered with my education.” Kyle seemed to know by now that personal facts always made Elayne happy, “But really, I had heard that they were moving the violin classes to the same time as my favourite tv show.”

Elayne snorted, shook her head, and filled in her password.

“Hey! I was just a kid!” Kyle seemed to detect her mocking, even if she managed not to laugh out loud, “Besides, Terrance and Phillip were my life back then.”

Elayne shot an amused glance Kyle’s way, “And that was when you were, what? Sixteen?”

Kyle sputtered in response before he calmed himself, turned towards his own screen and muttered, “At least I wasn’t the one in Terrance and Phillip PJ’s until I was eighteen.” Another image of Eric, this time in his favourite PJ’s drifted into Elayne’s head. Oh, how she wished she could inform Kyle that Eric did, in fact, still sleep in T&P PJ's at almost twenty. Her grin grew for just a second, before she schooled it and opened her Google drive, “Did you find out how to work that T-test thing on our data set?”

“Yeah, turns out if you just click…” Elayne settled in for an in-depth explanation, though she didn’t really mind it. Elayne found she liked the way Kyle explained things, he let her figure things out herself, just nudged her in the right direction if she didn’t get it.

Kyle was a natural at this whole statistics thing, seemed to like it too. Elayne just saw it as a necessary evil. They had easily slipped into this way of working together. Kyle brought coffee, Elayne would bring snacks. Kyle would figure out the core of what they were supposed to do, Elayne applied it to their data set.

Kyle had been surprisingly easy to get along with. Elayne had somewhat of a bad experience with group projects so it was nice to have a partner that came prepared for once. On top of that, it seemed that now that Kyle had decided she was okay, he appeared to be a fun person as well. Sure, they were mostly working on the group assignment, but Kyle had surprised her a few days before by suddenly dropping his head on his arms, groaning, “If we keep this up I am going to dream about SPSS and normal distributions. Can we please just watch Netflix for a bit or something?”

They had ended up in his dorm living room, ordering Chinese take-out, binge watching old Terrance and Phillip seasons. Kyle had complained that the food wasn’t as shitty as the city wok in South Park, Elayne had complained that the earlier Terrance and Phillip seasons were tame, and Kyle’s roommate had just looked at them weirdly as they both cried from laughing.

This meeting was to make up for lost time while watching Netflix. They both didn’t seem to regret the wasted time though, as they were much more effective today than they had been that other night. At this point they pretty much just had to write the conclusion, discussion and abstract, and then they would be done. Good thing too, since Elayne had competitions coming up.

“So, when is your first match?”

Elayne looked up, trying to visualize her schedule, “The Saturday after next.”

“Same weekend the Terrance and Phillip reunion movie comes out.”

“Yup.”

“Want to go after your match?”

_What?_

Elayne’s eyes shot to Kyle’s, finding nothing but a friendly invitation there. Her eyes lit up anyway, “Sure!”

What Elayne did not know, was that Kyle was also planning on watching her match. She only realised it when she saw his fiery red hair in the crowds. She hadn’t really wanted him to see her play. Originally, she took up tennis to get some of her aggression out of her system, which was still visible in the way she played. She had a strong swing, and though she was not one of those screamers, she was often called the ice-queen because of her calculating demeanour. It wasn’t anything like how she behaved off court. Elayne hadn’t asked Kyle to come because she hadn’t wanted him to see the aggressive side of her.

Now that he was here, however, Elayne couldn’t help but beam up at him and wave. He looked a bit sheepish as he waved back. It was almost as if he was self-conscious because she had picked him out instantly. She blew him a kiss, already knowing that it would make his face go blank in that familiar way. Elayne turned her back on him as she started setting up, checking her racket and retying her shoelaces. She mentally went over what she knew about the girl she was playing against.

One of the drawbacks of coming here to play was that she didn’t know any of her opponents. She was dependant on her coach’s opinion on them for information on tactics. This girl apparently had a crazy hard swing and pretty good stamina, but her technique wasn’t quite there. Elayne would lose if it came to power, but her technique was top notch and, best of all, her stamina was great.

Elayne started out relaxed, observing her opponent. She didn’t lose many of her games but didn’t try particularly hard for breakpoints either. That way she ended up 1-1 in sets with a 5-3 game disadvantage. Her coach wasn’t happy, she could see him fuming, but it was her turn to serve and the other girl was getting tired. Time to turn it up a notch.

She won her own game without her opponent scoring a single point. The girl looked a bit confused as the balls seemed to be flying towards her faster instead of slower. 5-4.

Her opponent visibly shook herself out of the surprise, and Elayne could just imagine her telling herself she just had to win this game, and then she would have the match. As she prepared to throw the ball for service, she looked Elayne straight in the eyes. Elayne grinned her most predatorial grin.

The service was faulted.

Twice.

This was just too easy. Elayne got a breakpoint on the game. 5-5. After that, it was a matter of playing it out. Kyle was waiting for her outside her changing room when she exited. She smiled.

“Hey,” she greeted him.

“Hi, well played.”

Elayne smiled a bit self-consciously, “Thanks.” There was a pause before she remembered and tagged her usual question on, “Tell me something I don’t know.” 

“I hadn’t pegged you as the strategic type.”

Elayne tried hard not to flinch at the slight accusation in his tone. Or maybe she imagined that, because when she looked him in the eye he looked more impressed than annoyed. Elayne decided to beam instead.

“They don’t call me the ice-queen for nothing you know.”

Kyle frowned then, “Still, I feel kind of sorry for her. Must be embarrassing to lose after being that much ahead.”

Elayne shrugged, “If she can’t take losing, she should have picked a different hobby.”

“Isn’t that a bit harsh?”

Elayne turned to face him, “Do _you_ feel bad for the other team if you win?”

“I do, a little, when we overwhelm them.” This was the first time they were having anything even remotely resembling an argument. “Besides, I don’t lure them into thinking they are winning when I could have waltzed all over them from the start.” Damn, he looked sort of cute when he was riled up.

“Excuse me?” Elayne raised a single eyebrow, feeling her own temper rise.

“Don’t give me that. Those last 4 games? She didn’t stand a chance. Why didn’t you start like that? It would have spared her from almost winning. It’s like you’re…” Kyle paused, seemingly thinking about what exactly she was like, “like you’re a cat, playing with its food.”

Oh, so that’s what annoyed him.

“I couldn’t have,” Elayne said, stopping Kyle in his tracks.

“What?” he asked.

“I couldn’t have waltzed right over her from the start.”

Kyle’s face fell blank, “Why not?”

“Because she has a stronger swing, and pretty good stamina. I play more on technique than raw strength. If I was going to have any chance of winning, I had to tire her out while preserving my own stamina.”

“Seriously?”

Elayne nodded, “Yeah. I mean, sure, I threw in some mental attacks with my body language and stuff, but mostly, I was just biding my time. Very nearly ran out of time, too. My coach wasn’t very happy with me, either.”

Something seemed to be dawning on Kyle, “So, they call you the ice-queen because…?”

“Because I am a strategist and I execute my strategies without mercy,” _And because I come from cold as fuck Colorado, but Kyle doesn’t need to know that,_ Elayne added mentally.

“Right.” Kyle seemed to shrug off the topic and turned to Elayne with one of those grins that made her fear she had somehow pushed herself into the friendzone. “So, want to go grab sushi for lunch and muck around on my Xbox?”

Elayne made a face at him, “Sushi sounds fine, but don’t make me do that Kinect yoga stuff again.”

Kyle grinned mischievously, “Nah, I got bored last night, so I dug up my old Terrance and Phillip games.”

“Dude! Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

Elayne pretended to swoon and put on her sweetest voice, “Oh honey, you know just how to treat a girl right.” He blanked out for only 2 seconds this time before he rolled his eyes and headed to his car. Elayne wasn’t sure if she should be annoyed or amused.

They made a quick stop at the most decent sushi place between the tennis courts and the campus, arguing about silly things like spicy tuna vs extra spicy tuna, and then spent the rest of the afternoon playing old games. That night, they shared a big box of salted popcorn at the movies and laughed themselves to tears at the ridiculousness that was Terrance and Phillip, the semi-argument of the afternoon forgotten.

Well, almost forgotten. As Kyle drove them back to campus in his car, Elayne cast an unnoticed appreciative glance his way. After this afternoon she believed firmly that if she ever pulled the kind of crap she hated about herself, at least Kyle would call her out on it.

-

The next time Elayne saw Kyle, it was during lecture. Elayne noticed right away that something was wrong. Though he gave Elayne a small smile in greeting, he frowned right back down to his phone. It made Elayne’s usual question die in her throat. His fidgeting did not stop during the lecture, and over time the force with which he jammed his fingers to the touchscreen increased.

“You trying to get your fingers through that phone?” She asked him, hoping to break a bit of the tension.

The flash in his eyes as he glanced at her told Elayne that he was not in the right mood to be teased.

“Hey, sorry. What’s wrong?” She asked instead.

Kyle seemed to appraise her for a moment before looking back at his phone, “Just stuff at home.”

Throughout the lecture, Elayne kept glancing Kyle’s way between taking notes. He didn’t even try to pay attention. He just kept texting people without stopping, constantly switching between chats and frowning down at his screen the whole time. At the end of the lecture, Elayne quickly saved her notes and sent them over to Kyle; he obviously hadn't made any himself. When she turned around to tell him, however, he was already half-way out of the lecture hall, dialling a number on his phone.

Elayne wasn’t sure why she hurried after him, but she did. By the time she caught up to him, he was already talking to someone.

“No, mom. I am sure he’s not here. He wouldn’t have lied about visiting me anyway,” the sharp tone in his voice and the high-pitched sniffling on the other side of the line made Elayne truly worried. She leaned against a wall as he paced up and down the hallway, not even noticing her presence.

“Come on, mom. You know that if he showed up here, I would call you immediately. Besides, he knows this as well, so he won’t show up here.”

Short pause.

“You sure he swiped your credit card?”

A short answer.

“Look, I am texting all his friends and all my friends that he even remotely gets along with. They either don’t know anything or he told them not to tell anything.” His mother replied again, longer this time. After a while Kyle heaved the biggest sigh Elayne had seen him heave yet.

“Got it, mom. I will tell my friends here to keep a lookout for him as well, and I will tell the university so they’re aware. If he does come here, someone is bound to notice him; he’d stand out way too much as a fourteen-year-old.”

One more short answer. “Yeah, I will let you know if I hear something, keep me updated as well, mom. Bye.” He hung up without waiting for a reply, stared at his phone for a bit, and jumped when he looked up and finally noticed Elayne’s presence.

“Dude! What the fuck? Don’t creep like that.”

Elayne raised an eyebrow at being called ‘dude’, but decided that wasn’t important right now, “I wasn’t creeping, I have been here the whole time. You passed me like ten times during your conversation.”

“Shit, really?” He seemed nervous, “You heard all that?”

“Most of it, Ike is missing?” Kyle liked to talk about his brother in that fake annoyed way older siblings talk about a younger sibling they secretly care a lot about.

Kyle looked down at his phone again, “He didn’t come home after school yesterday.”

“And he’s never done that before?”

“Nope. And he won’t answer his phone. Doesn’t seem like he’s even reading any of our messages.” He looked haunted as he started pacing again, “He’s fourteen and he is nowhere in South Park as far as we can tell. Anything could have happened to him.”

His voice was slowly rising in pitch as he started ranting about all the things that could have happened to his baby brother. Elayne decided action was necessary. She grabbed him by the elbow and dragged him over to her dorm, since she knew Katy still had classes. Heck, Elayne had a class to be in. It wasn’t until she had sat him down and pushed a large cappuccino into his hands, that she allowed him to freak out again.

“Ok, now take one more deep breath, and then tell me what’s up,” she said.

Kyle regarded her for a few seconds before he started talking.

“So, Ike is fourteen, right? But he is way smarter than anyone else. So, he skipped a few grades.”

Elayne nodded, “You’ve told me this before.”

“Yeah. But what I didn’t tell you, was that he doesn’t really like it. Lately he’s been arguing with my parents a lot. He is smarter than me, but they want him to go to college closer because he is so young.”

“Wait. They are arguing about college choices with a fourteen-year-old? Just how many grades did he skip?”

“He’s graduating this year.”

Well, that put things in perspective. “Right.”

“He wants to go to MIT, and I think he might even get accepted. But mom and dad don’t want him that far away. They suggested he come here instead, because I am here.”

“I bet he didn’t like that.”

“Nope.”

Elayne was trying to think of something she could do to help, when the screen of Kyle’s phone suddenly lit up; a picture of a teenage kid with black hair as contact.

Kyle picked it up too fast for Elayne to read the name but she didn’t have to.

“Ike? You okay? Mom and dad are worried about you, man,” Kyle pushed out right away. The answering voice made both the occupants freeze in their tracks, though.

Elayne didn’t need to hear what he was saying to know Eric was on the other side of the line. Kyle apparently knew it instantly as well. His face went as red as his hair and the hand not holding his phone clenched into a fist.

“Why the fuck do you have Ike’s phone, Fatass?” Elayne moved to sit next to Kyle putting a hand on his shoulder. This way, she could also hear what Eric was saying.

“…anyway to talk to an old friend, Kahl?”

Kyle grit his teeth, “Just answer the question Fatass.”

“Well, you see, Ike was lonely you know. Couldn’t connect with his parents, his brother too busy to call…” Eric dawdled. Kyle’s shoulders tensed even more under Elayne’s fingers. “He needed someone to listen to him.”

“I swear to god, if you did anything to screw up his future I will fly over to Denver just to kick your fat ass, Cartman,” Kyle hissed through his teeth.

“Are you sure you should be saying that to me right now, Kahl?” Elayne knew that tone, Eric was trying to provoke Kyle. “I mean, I do have your hungover underage brother sleeping in my cousin’s room.” Elayne’s stomach twisted, “I feel I should report this to someone; underage drinking is a really bad thing, you know?” Kyle's baby brother was sleeping in her room right now? There were about a thousand things wrong with that scenario.

Kyle took a deep breath, seemed to be channelling calm from somewhere, but Elayne wasn't fooled; Kyle was pissed. “What do you want, Cartman,” he asked, sounding deceptively calm.

It seemed that was the right thing to say.

“Just have someone come pick him up or something, he was being a pain yesterday.”

“Fine, I’ll text you as soon as I can to get someone to pick him up. Tell him to call me when he wakes up.”

“Whatever, Jew.” A beeping tone indicated Eric had hung up on Kyle, who stared at his phone for a few seconds as if debating smashing it.

Elayne plucked the phone out of his grasp and replaced it with one of her pillows before he could.   
“Throw that if you need to,” she said.

He did. He flung every pillow in reach around. Yelling as he was going at it, “That fucking Fatass, sometimes I wish we still lived close so I could pound his face in for being a fucking cunt.”

He yelled profanities at thin air for a bit longer. Afterwards, Elayne handed him his phone, “Call someone to pick him up.”

Kyle looked up at her, “Right.”

Elayne left Kyle in her living area and moved to her bedroom where she picked up her sports bag and started throwing some stuff in. Exercise always helped her calm down, if the pillow pile at her door was any indication, it would work for Kyle as well. She opened a drawer and stared at its contents in deliberation, before shrugging to herself and adding the boxing equipment. When she came back, Kyle was just finishing up a conversation.

“…don’t worry about it Ike, I get it. We all did stupid stuff at some point, me and the guys weren’t what you would call shining examples. Of course, I won’t rat you out to mom,” Kyle flashed her a relieved smile when she came in. “Stan and Kenny will come pick you up, okay? Tell mom you went to an after-school seminar, ran into Kenny, forgot the time, and didn’t notice your battery was empty.”

As Elayne got closer she heard a small, guilty sounding voice.

“Ken will vouch for the story, dude, I already talked to him.”

Short wining answer.

“Yes, mom will still be mad, but not as mad as she would be if she knows what you really did. She’ll get over it.”

Kyle noticed the bag as Elayne put it on the coffee table and raised an eyebrow at it. “Yeah, no problem little brother, call me when you get home,” he hung up and looked at Elayne, “two of my friends will pick him up at Cartman’s and bring him home. What’s up with the sports bag?”

When Elayne didn’t answer right away he added, “You don’t have practise today.”

“I don’t,” Elayne picked up the bag and went for the door, gesturing that Kyle should follow her, which he did.

“Then why?” Kyle followed her out and she started walking ahead of him. “Also, the gym is the other way.”

“I know, we are going to your dorm.”

“Okay. Again, why?”

“Because you still look like you need to hit something.”

“Right.”

They spent the rest of the afternoon in the gym, Kyle punching either boxing bags or practise pads that Elayne held up for him. He started off hitting hard, making Elayne glad they were alone in that part of the gym. As they kept it up, he tired himself out, still grumbling under his breath, but no longer making Elayne grit her teeth as she took the blows. When he finally ran out of steam, they went to their respective changing rooms without saying anything. When Elayne came out of hers, Kyle was already waiting for her outside.

“Thanks.”

“Anytime, Kyle,” she gave him a tired smile, knowing she would regret this little boxing session during practise tomorrow, “feel better?”

“Yeah.”

They fell back into silence as they walked back to the dorms. Only speaking up to say goodbye. As Elayne took a shower in her dorm, she finally allowed herself to think on the fact that she had learned something rather unexpected about Kyle today.

He had a major temper. Elayne had thought she had seen the extent of his temper when he called her out on her conduct during tennis but she had been very, very wrong. He could rage and cuss and completely lose sight of himself.

In a way it reminded her of Eric and herself. No wonder those two had clashed so often as kids, considering the major difference between Kyle and Eric was the direction of their moral compasses. Elayne shook herself out of her thoughts as she turned the shower off and moved to get her towel.

The point wasn’t why Kyle and Eric had never gotten along, Elayne didn’t care about that.

The point was that Kyle had a major temper, and it didn’t make him any less attractive to Elayne, it made him more so.

Elayne gritted her teeth. There was no way Katy was right and she was falling for him, was there?

Elayne stared at her reflection, a red face looking back.

No.

Her face was red because her shower had been hot. Kyle had nothing to do with it.

Absolutely nothing.

In the back of Elayne’s mind a tiny little voice was born. It whispered, “You keep telling yourself that, hon.”

 


	3. Fever

The next morning Kyle looked kind of out of it. As Elayne met him in their usual spot, he seemed to be slumping over a bit and his eyes were glued to his phone again.

Nevertheless, Elayne approached him as she usually would.

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

“The first woman to win a Nobel prize was Marie Curie,” he said, voice sounding flat like he wasn’t really into it.

“Hmm, interesting. Too bad I already knew that.”

“Should have figured,” Kyle seemed to think something over for a bit, but instead of trying again, he asked Elayne a question.

“From the beginning, you’ve been asking me all sorts of things, but you never tell me anything about yourself, why?”

Shit.

Elayne scrambled for an answer.

“You never asked.” There.

“I am asking now.”

Shit. Shit. Shit.

As Elayne panicked, trying to figure out what to say, Kyle turned his piercing green eyes on her. Not the blank stare she was used to, but something much more calculating. Elayne dropped her gaze trying to avoid those green orbs that seemed to look right through her.

Had his friends somehow seen a picture of her in her house or something? Wait, no. That was ridiculous. That would assume they knew of her existence in the first place.

“You know, what I said wasn’t true, you do talk about yourself. You could have easily denied that statement.”

Elayne’s gaze shot back up to Kyle’s, realizing he had given her a way out but she had missed it.

Now he seemed more determined than before, “Which means you were so panicked about the fact that I am pointing out your avoidance of a certain topic, you couldn’t even think of the logical response.”

Elayne was certain she looked like a deer in the headlights by now. Kyle leaned into her personal space the way she usually did to him, “So tell me, Elayne; why was it so important for me not to know you were from Denver?”

“It wasn’t-,” Elayne stammered out, glad they were in one of their more private preferred study spots, “I just didn’t think about telling you.”

“Bullshit.”

Elayne blinked, “What?”

“Thinking back, I realise you purposefully avoid and change the subject whenever we come close to talking about your home or your high school life.”

Of course, Kyle would call her out on it. She should have expected something like this weeks ago. Elayne moved to defend herself, but Kyle cut her off.

“Didn’t you think, yesterday, that maybe you could have used your contacts to help find my brother?”

Oh, so that’s why it riled him up so much.

“I mean, we have known each other for months now, and I barely know anything about you beyond stuff that happened since then! I thought we were friends, but you wouldn’t even make a few calls home to help me look for my little brother?”

Elayne kicked herself out of her shock.

“It wouldn’t have helped,” she said, “even if I had called. If I had never heard of you before I met you, it means we moved in very different circles.”

“That’s exactly why it would make the search more eff--” Kyle said, but she cut him off.

“Besides, I don’t have anyone at home who would do me the favour of looking for him if I did ask.”

That shut Kyle up.

“That can’t be true,” he spoke after a few moments of silence.

“It is,” Elayne paused, narrowing her eyes, “how did you even find out I’m from Denver?”

Kyle had the decency to look sheepish, “Newspaper wants me to write an article about you, I decided to get some background knowledge on ‘the ice queen’. I was surprised to find your full nickname is ‘The ice queen of Colorado’.”

“If you wanted to know, you could have just asked.”

“I got the feeling you didn’t want me to.”

“True, but I would have answered anyway.”

Kyle looked at her intently for a few seconds, “I still don’t see how someone like you could be disliked,” he said.

Elayne heaved a big sigh, “Well, within tennis circles, I was pretty well known, and that nickname wasn’t meant in a nice way,” she looked down at her hands as she continued, “and in school I was relatively well liked until the final year, when I decided I wanted to get as far away from Denver as I could possibly get.”

Kyle opened his mouth, probably to ask more on the topic but Elayne started talking first.

“Don’t ask, that’s the part I really don’t want to talk about. The point is that, before I realised it, I had burned most of my bridges back home, and the desire to leave only seemed to get more valid. So, when I got offered full scholarship for my tennis skills, I didn’t even think about it before I accepted.”

“I see,” was all the response she got. They fell silent for a bit, both studying in silence. After a while Elayne felt the need to break it.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“What for?”

“Not helping more with your brother.”

Kyle smiled a little, “Thanks, but it was an unfair accusation.”

Elayne must have looked confused because he elaborated, “I didn’t ask you to, but you stayed close and tried to keep me calm even before you knew what was wrong. And then after, you essentially let me take all my rage out on you.”

Elayne felt her face going red.

“So, thanks, for helping me.”

Elayne looked back at the assignment sheet for her chemistry 101 course, “You already thanked me for that yesterday,” she mumbled.

They went silent again for a while until Kyle started fidgeting, and Kyle only fidgeted when he had something on his mind. Elayne let him fidget for ten minutes before it started to get on her nerves.

“You got something to say, spit it out,” she said.

Kyle didn’t say anything, but he did stop fidgeting to look at her. Just when Elayne thought he wouldn’t say anything and turned back to her work, he spoke up, “You said that you’d answer me anyway.”

“I did.”

“Mind doing an interview for the newspaper with me?”

Elayne paused to think about that.

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Kyle added.

“I want to, it’s just that there are some things I would rather not talk about,” Elayne said carefully.

Kyle levelled a stare at her, but it wasn’t hostile, “Sure, just tell me if I am getting to topics you are uncomfortable with.”

Elayne smiled, “I will, thanks.”

“When do you have time for it?”

Elayne got her planner out, “Hmmm, I got a lot of deadlines coming up before Christmas break, you going home for Christmas?”

“No, my parents are taking Ike to look at the MIT campus, so there’s no use in going home.”

“In that case we could do it during Christmas break, I think both our schedules will be more open.”

Kyle seemed to think about that.

“Unless you would rather not do work during the break?”

“That’s not it, just thinking when would be best. Can you do Monday over lunch?”

“Sure.”

Elayne knew full well that this plan could backfire massively. That she had no idea what Kyle would want to know. As the date of the interview neared, she felt herself getting more and more nervous about it. She tried not to show it to Kyle, she wanted him to feel trusted. She did trust him. More than she had trusted anyone in a long time. But she didn’t trust herself. Not with him.

Apparently, she did show it though, because after the last day of lectures before the break, Kyle stopped her from leaving for her next class.

“We don’t have to do the interview, if you feel uncomfortable about it,” he started, looking honestly concerned, “I can even ask someone else to do it, if you are uncomfortable with me specifically.”

Elayne felt like she couldn’t deny that fast enough, “Nonononono, I want to do it. And you are fine. I just…” She took a deep breath. “It’s been a long time since I talked that much about myself. I’m nervous.”

Kyle looked relieved, “Ah, ok. Let me know if you change your mind.”

“Sure, thanks.”

-

[10:00 – From Mom] _Hey Pumpkin, are you sure you don’t want to come home for Christmas? We are all meeting up at your grandfather’s house._

Elayne stared at the text. She had known it would be coming ever since she had texted her mom about her holiday plans the week before. She had known her mother would not just let it go. As expected, she had waited for Elayne to feel like silence was consent before she started guilt tripping her.

If she had to be honest, Elayne would admit that she did, in fact, love her mother. The problem was that she had picked up quite a few ways to manipulate people in the time she had been married to Elayne’s father. She wasn’t as selfish as an actual Cartman, but she knew how to get what she wanted. What she wanted right now was apparently for Elayne to come home for Christmas.

Elayne heaved a big sigh, and typed a quick reply that, yes, she was sure, that she had a lot of deadlines to make and that she didn’t want to miss any training. All of which was perfectly true, but none of them were the true reason Elayne was staying. Elayne was staying because Kyle was staying, and Elayne would be damned if she let such a golden opportunity pass by. Besides, Katy wasn’t going home either, and her parents never said a word about it.

It was Monday, the day of her interview with Kyle, and she had been preparing to leave before she got distracted by her phone. Elayne put it back down and quickly wiggled her way into her favourite pair of jeans, her university hoody and her good pair of boots. It had been a mild December so far, but the last few days the weather had turned freezing. Elayne had her hand on the door handle when her phone jingled its text tune again. She stalled, it was probably her mother again, and she really wasn’t in the mood for it right now. After considering just ignoring it for a while, she pulled out her phone and checked her messages.

It wasn’t her mother.

[10:18 – From Kyle<3] _Hey, sorry to do this so late, but I think I caught the flu or something. Can we reschedule?_

Tiny pinpricks of disappointment tried to pierce Elayne’s heart, but she scoffed and pushed them away. It wasn’t like he was ditching a date. It was just lunch for College stuff, and besides, she wasn’t really interested in him that way beyond her schemes. Little voices in her head sounding like Katy could just go be silent in a corner.

Still.

Elayne knew that Kyle’s roommate had gone home for the holidays, and the idea of him sick and alone in his room didn’t sit right with Elayne. She tapped her phone to her lips in thought and then went to get her proper winter gear.

Thirty minutes later found Elayne in front of Kyle’s room, knocking on his door. After some stumbling sounds she heard the locks click and the door opened to reveal a very dishevelled looking Kyle.

“Shit, I thought I sent you a message,” he sounded terrible, too, “didn’t you read it?”

Elayne smiled and lifted the grocery bags in her hands, “Nah, I read it. Just thought you could use some rations to get through the next couple of days.”

The corners of Kyle’s mouth twitched upwards just a little, and he stepped aside to let Elayne in. As she passed him she added, “and I can play cute little housewife for you, if that’ll make you feel better.”

She waggled her eyebrows at him, but her flirting seemed to go even further over his head than usual.

“Actually… if you have soup in there somewhere, that would be great,” he said.

Elayne dug into one of the bags and produced a can of chicken soup, “Coming right up.”

Kyle smiled tiredly and made his way back to his room. Elayne thought he would go back to his bed, but he came back out a minute later with his laptop, his pillow and his blanket, and proceeded to install himself on the couch. When Elayne raised a questioning eyebrow at him from the kitchen area, he shrugged, “I have been sleeping for over 15 hours. I am at the point where I’m miserable, just want to sleep it all away, but have already tried that for too long, and now I’m wide awake.”

“I know that feeling, it sucks.”

“No shit.”

Elayne finished warming up the soup and poured it into a bowl. She brought it over to Kyle who was scrolling through their options on Netflix.

“No T&P today?” She put the bowl and a spoon next to the laptop.

“Nah, too noisy and flashy, don’t think I can take that right now,” he scrolled around some more before hovering the mouse over something in thought.

When Elayne noticed what it was she laughed a little, “Hadn’t pegged you for the classic romantic type of guy.” She walked back to the kitchen to make them both tea.

“It’s a guilty pleasure, are you going to destroy my street cred?” Kyle sounded like he was trying too hard to sound lively.

Elayne scoffed, “What street cred?”

Kyle threw her a wounded look and then eyed the bags that Elayne was emptying into his fridge and cabinets again.

“You don’t happen to have any of that anti-flu stuff in there, do you?” He asked.

Elayne dug a box out and wiggled it at Kyle winningly.

“What kind of housewife would I be if I didn’t?” She teased, “but you need to eat something before you can take it.”

Kyle pouted, actually pouted, and Elayne did _not_ feel like melting into a puddle right then and there.

No way.

She tried hard to look stern but felt like she was failing miserably. It did seem to work though, because despite turning the pout up a notch, Kyle did turn around and picked up the soup.

Elayne smiled and returned to making tea, making her way to the couch holding two mugs and the box of pills in her jeans pocket while classical music indicated that they were indeed watching Pride and Prejudice of all things. The miniseries, not the movie. 

Kyle was sitting with his back against one of the arm rests, legs taking up most of the couch, but he had left enough space for Elayne to sit on the other end.  She plopped down, took off her boots and pulled her feet onto the couch, hugging her knees.

They watched the first episode in silence, Kyle making his way through the soup and Elayne silently handing him the pills when he finished it. Halfway through the second episode, Elayne started feeling like she was missing out on an opportunity. Would it be bad to flirt with Kyle while he was sick and wide open like this?

Elayne smirked to herself and decided it was the perfect opportunity to be a little more aggressive in her approach of Kyle. She could feel Kyle’s eyes on her periodically, and he seemed to be moving his legs around a lot as well. An idea popped into Elayne’s head and she made a big show of shivering.

“Are you cold?” Kyle asked right away.

Bingo. He had been keeping a close eye on her.

Elayne gave Kyle a self-conscious smile, “A little.”

“We can share the blanket,” Kyle said, pulling his knees closer.

Internally, Elayne cheered at her success, but she kept the slightly uncertain smile in place. “Are you sure?” She asked.

Kyle raised an eyebrow at her, “Would I ask, if I wasn’t?”

Elayne beamed and moved closer crossing her legs and pulling Kyle’s feet into her lap, so he didn’t need to change his original position. This earned Elayne a stare she could feel on her for a few seconds, but she ignored it and kept her own eyes at the screen. She wanted Kyle to think about that on his own.

By the end of the third episode Elayne looked to her right to see Kyle had fallen asleep again. That was disappointing, but Elayne was too comfortable at that point to leave or change position, so she kept watching the series.

Kyle stirred a few times during the next couple of hours but never fully woke up. During the last twenty minutes of the final episode, he stirred more often, and Elayne purposely put a hand on Kyle’s calf, slowly running up and down over the fabric covering his skin.

The touch eventually woke Kyle up, and he seemed a lot more alert than he had been before. His leg tensed under Elayne’s hand, and their eyes met for the first time since Kyle’s legs had ended up in Elayne’s lap, so Elayne wiggled her eyebrows at him, and while Kyle rolled his eyes, he didn’t move away.

“You look better, are you?” Elayne asked.

Kyle confirmed feeling better and even ate some more soup as Elayne ate a pasta salad she had bought while out, all the while making flirty jokes and being way inside Kyle’s personal space. All under the pretence of taking care of him, of course. Flirting was more satisfying than usual, since Kyle kept turning his gaze away from Elayne, his cheeks stained red, whenever she caught him staring at her.

He didn’t say anything though, and Elayne felt like she could push her luck a little further. So when they started watching a romcom, Elayne grabbed one of his feet and softly massaged it. Like before, Kyle tensed slightly before Elayne smiled at him and made a suggestive comment about the movie.

 By the time the movie ended, Kyle seemed sleepy again, and Elayne bade him good night and made to leave for her own dorm.

As she reached for the door handle Kyle suddenly spoke up, “Uhm, Elayne?”  

Elayne nearly jumped a foot into the air. She hadn’t noticed he had followed her to the door. She turned around to find Kyle standing right behind her, almost but not quite in her personal bubble.

“Yes?” She hated how her voice suddenly squeaked, she was supposed to be the suave one between them. She had no business acting the shy schoolgirl suddenly.

Kyle seemed to think a few things through, or maybe he wasn’t feeling as well as he claimed. As soon as the thought occurred to Elayne she stepped right over that personal bubble boundary and put her hand on his forehead. He wasn’t _that_ warm.

As Kyle raised his eyebrows at her in question, Elayne realised just how close she was and quickly took a step back. “Sorry, you looked like you were going to fall over,” she mumbled to her boots.

When Kyle stayed silent she peeked back up at him and had to do a double take. Kyle looked utterly amused.

“You remind me of my mother.”

Elayne felt her cheeks heat up, “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

Kyle smirked, the guy had the flu, but had the gall to smirk at her, “Depends on who you ask.”

“I’m asking _you_ ,” Elayne willed her cheeks to return to their usual colour, but it wasn’t working.

Kyle leaned against the wall and looked up in thought, “Well…” he started, “she can be a bit overbearing at times, but she means well.”

He looked back at Elayne, and she felt the blood rush to her cheeks all over again, “She would be happy to hear I wasn’t alone while sick.”

Elayne looked back down.

“It’s the decent thing to do,” she mumbled.

There was a lull in the conversation then, and Elayne figured that was it, so she reached behind her to open the door.

“You didn’t have to do this, you know, you could have spent your first Monday of break in any number of ways, and you spent it with a sick friend that blew off an appointment,” he said.

Elayne was still looking at her boots but she did notice Kyle’s sock-clad feet coming closer, at the same time becoming aware that she was letting the cold into his room.

She looked up, intending to tell Kyle to get away from the cold of the hallway, but she before she could speak up she found herself in a very warm embrace.

It lasted only a second, but it felt much longer than that before Kyle whispered a _thanks_ in her ear and made his way to the couch again.

Elayne managed to reply an _anytime_ in her shell-shocked state before turning on her heel and numbly making her way to her own dorm.

This was progress, right?

It had to be.

Elayne was already planning on how to get him to hug her again by the time she got to her own room, which was cold and dark since Katy had a date that night. Elayne wasn’t cold though, the fever-enhanced warmth of the short hug keeping her from noticing the cold. That little voice at the back of her head insistently tried to make itself known, but Elayne ignored it.

She finally made progress, and no way she was going home now.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi!
> 
> So editing this took a lot longer than I was expecting, but I think it turned out pretty good. ^^
> 
> Big thanks to my amazing beta, Xaverri (and as soon as I figure out how to properly tag her account I will ;))
> 
> Let me know what you think!!


	4. Christmas

Elayne’s mother kept texting her throughout break and she kept giving her the same answer; she was not going to Denver for the holidays. At first it wasn’t too bad, she just reminded her that she missed her and that she was disappointed she wouldn’t come home.

The texts gradually became more passive aggressive, reminding Elayne that she was the second daughter that refused to visit her. It wasn’t Elayne’s fault Alexandra didn’t want to, though. That was all Eric but Elayne would have trouble proving that.

On Christmas morning Elayne had sent another text to her mother, wishing her a nice day, that her present had arrived the day before, that she loved it, and that she missed her.

It was an hour before she got a reply.

[10:34 – From Mom] _Apparently not very much if you can’t even come home to your mother for Christmas_

Elayne had been staring at that text for ten minutes, not really knowing what to say to it. She had told her mom over and over that she didn’t want to fly all the way there. She had used every excuse in the book: homework, training, you name it, Elayne had used it. Her mom couldn’t leave her alone about it.

What was she supposed to say to her mom’s text though? Why couldn’t her mother just leave things be? She honestly was very busy. Even if she had gone, she would have been holed up in her room all day, writing assignments. Elayne had felt annoyance build up every time she got a text from her mother, and now it was close to boiling over. Why did she even bother? Her mother wanted her home, and she would do anything to get it done. Elayne should have count her blessings that Eric hadn’t been recruited into the scheme.

Vivienne Cartman was not born a Cartman but in many ways, she fit right in. She got along great with Liane Cartman, Eric’s mother, and Eric knew just how to manipulate her.

Elayne had just put her phone in her pocket and stood up to go get herself some hot chocolate when her phone vibrated again, indicating another message.

[10:49 – From Eric] _Why the fuck can’t you just do your mom a favour and come here, at least for New Year’s Eve? Now she keeps nagging me. I’m the victim here. Why do I have to suffer because you can’t drag your cunt away from them California dicks? God, Elayne, I don’t care how much of a slut you are but don’t make it my problem. I know you think we’re all manipulative trash, but the true shrewd bitch is you and you know it._

Elayne stared at her phone for ten full seconds before flinging the device onto her bed with all her strength and a yell of frustration. It bounced twice before falling off the other edge, landing on the ground with a resounding smack.

“Lying, scheming son of a bitch! Fucking asswipe! Who the hell do you think you are?” She yelled, not really expecting an answer, considering Eric was in another state.

“Uhmm, is this a bad time?”

Elayne froze before carefully turning around. Kyle was standing in the open doorway of her bedroom looking at her apprehensively, a thermos and mugs in his hands. Elayne felt her face flush in shame, frozen to the ground.

Kyle shrugged at her silence and added, “Katy let me in, do you want me to leave?”

Elayne closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Her rage draining away as she realised Kyle had just witnessed the side of her she wanted him to see least. “No, sorry. That was obviously not aimed at you.” She tried to smile, but she didn’t think she managed it very well. “Come in, sit down.”

Kyle didn’t look convinced in the least, but he walked in and sat down on the bed, putting the thermos and mugs on Elayne’s desk. “I brought eggnog, family recipe, with a small alteration. Mom doesn’t usually put booze in it, so don’t tell her I did that.” He turned his gaze towards Elayne. “Need to talk about it?”

Elayne took some time to consider that question. She walked around her bed to pick up her phone, relieved when she saw there was no significant damage to it. Moving back to sit next to Kyle on her bed, she stared at the phone in her hands as she tried to figure out where to begin.

“Remember when you confronted me about not talking about my past?” She asked, seeing Kyle nod from the peripheral of her vision. “My family isn’t really the closest. My dad disappeared years ago, nobody really knows where he is. My mom is usually okay but my sister got fed up with things and left. I think she’s working as a waitress somewhere on the East Coast.”

Kyle reached out and pulled the phone out of Elayne’s hand, replacing it with a mug.

“The rest of my extended family embodies everything I hate about the human race. They are everything I never want to be and worse.” Elayne took a deep breath. “I never liked them, but I truly started hating them when I realised that I am just like them.”

“You don’t represent everything to be hated in a human, to me.”

Elayne looked up at Kyle with a wry smile. “That’s because ever since I realised it, I tried very hard not to be.” She took a sip of the eggnog, noting it was very good. “I was doing pretty well too. I focussed my cold-hearted strategizing on tennis, where I didn’t care if people dislike me or not. My anger management issues went into boxing practise, so I could be more focussed on the tennis field. I had more friends in school. They even trusted me with personal problems which I loved because I like solving puzzles.” Elayne took another deep breath, feeling like she was about to cross a point of no return.

“And then my cousin happened.” Elayne sounded tired, she was really threading a thin line with this story. She had no idea how much of this had made it around Eric’s social circle but she needed to air her frustrations and right now Kyle was there. “He made my sister leave town. I’m not sure what he did to her but she hasn’t spoken to my mom in over a year, and I’m convinced he has something to do with it.

He somehow convinced all of my friends, bar one, that I was a lying, scheming slut and then it turned out that the only girl I still trusted had been sleeping with him for weeks.”

Kyle still didn’t say anything, but now that Elayne had started talking, she couldn’t seem to stop. That little voice in her head suggested that maybe she wanted him to figure out that she was essentially using him to get to Eric. Maybe she did, right now the years of frustration created by that fatass just needed out.

“When we were kids it used to be a game: he outsmarted me and I would outsmart him in return. When we grew older, I stopped winning. Partly because I was trying not to be like that anymore and partly because he is just that much more of an ass. It didn’t matter when he was far away, but when he moved closer, I found myself pulled back into that mindset and I tried to get into universities in other states to get away from it all.” Elayne fell silent for a bit, thinking of where to go from there.

“But why were you so angry right now?”

Right, that’s why she was talking so much.

“My mom wanted me home for Christmas. She has been trying to guilt-trip me into coming home for weeks. Today she decided that she would involve my cousin in trying to get me to Denver, at least for New Year’s Eve. He always knows just what to say to get under my skin, and what he said today made me realise that even though I am halfway across the country, I still want to get back at him, and I still find myself plotting to get at…him.”

Elayne’s voice faltered. Why the fuck did she say all that? She put the mug down and dropped her head in her hands, tears coming to her eyes. What was she doing? This was dangerous in so many ways. Did she want him to find her out? The plan had been simple: flirt with Kyle -one of Eric’s greatest frenemies- get him to sleep with her and when her cousin “accidentally” found out about them; play the innocent victim.

Acting as if Kyle had done most of the seducing would positively piss Eric off. One of the things about him was that he was weirdly protective of her at the most random of times. Like when Elayne had suffered a black eye from a rather abusive guy that thought he could have her just because of the rumours Eric was spreading.

When Eric had seen the mark, he had simply turned around and walked off, coming back hours later with bleeding knuckles. The guy that had hit Elayne had missed two weeks of school due to bruised ribs. Elayne never asked how Eric knew who to get; she hadn’t wanted him to know she felt like she owed him. Of course, that was before she figured out he had been sleeping with her best friend Jennifer. Any grateful feelings she may have harboured towards him evaporated, and the need for revenge was born.

Kyle didn’t need to know all that, however. And even though she had succeeded for years to never fall back to such petty behaviour as scheming against Eric, that one act of treason would be the last thing she would make him pay for.

That she might have been starting to look forward a bit more every day to the whole “bedding Kyle” part was something she wasn’t ready to admit just yet.

“You know what the worst part is?” Elayne said, but she didn’t wait for an answer, didn’t want one. “Knowing that I tried so hard for years not to do that shit anymore and yet a few months with closer interaction with him made it all come back.

“I did horrible stuff to classmates, especially in primary and middle school. I was the biggest bully in the year. And it wasn’t the usual stuff either, why hide favourite pens and decapitate teddy bears when you can convince a classmate that her little sister is an alien and that she needs to bring her to NASA. I destroyed friendships just because it annoyed me they had cool best-friend bracelets. In middle school, I had a teacher unrightfully fired for paedophilia, just because he wouldn’t let me sit next to the window-"

It wasn’t until she felt Kyle’s arm gently pulling her towards him that she realised she was crying. Horrified she tried to pull back, but it was a half-hearted attempt and before she knew it, she was sobbing into Kyle’s shirt. He had turned towards her, one arm around her back, the other on the back of her head, gently holding her against him. For a while Kyle didn’t say anything, allowing her to get her frustration out as she listed everything she remembered doing before she decided she didn’t want to be a total bitch anymore. It was a weirdly soothing experience. As if by confessing to Kyle, all her ‘sins’ would be cleansed, somehow.

When Elayne had calmed down, she pulled back reluctantly, missing the warmth of his embrace instantly. She peeked at him, but couldn’t decipher his expression. Swallowing past the lump in her throat she asked what she had been dreading. “Do you still think I don’t represent everything to be hated in a human?”

“Dude, don’t be so fucking dramatic.”

She gave him a stunned look.

“You have flaws, everyone does.” Kyle looked away. “You actively try to work on those flaws, very few people I know do that.”

_I am not so sure about that._ Elayne thought, thinking back to her plans for Kyle. Then, for the first time, it wasn’t someone else’s voice telling her how terrible a person she was being for using him in her schemes.

He nudged her. “Do you want to haul that boxing equipment to the gym again? Work it out?”

Elayne looked up to see Kyle staring at her boxing gloves and smiled. “Nah, got rid of most of the energy by beating up my phone and crying but thanks for the offer.” Elayne picked up her mug again, frowning. “Say, if your family is Jewish, why is there a family recipe for eggnog?”

“Eggnog is not restricted to Christians, you know.” There was a slight bite to the sentence.

“Right, sorry.”

“But, my mom started making it after I got lonely as a kid because we were the only family not celebrating Christmas.” Kyle swirled the liquid around in his mug with a warm smile. “We never say anything about it, but she makes us eggnog on Christmas every year.”

“Your mother sounds nice.”

Kyle scoffed. “My friends would disagree, saying she’s too strict, making the other mothers be stricter as well. But she means well, and she’s a damn good cook.”

“I can see why other kids would dislike that.” Elayne smirked, suddenly noticing Katy in the doorway looking bemused. “Hey Kat, need anything?”

Katy’s look turned slightly evil. Since when did that girl do slightly evil? “Well, since you were complaining about me buying too much food and for having to be the third wheel during Christmas dinner, why don’t we invite Kyle over tonight, as well?” She redirected her gaze towards Kyle. “Unless you have plans, of course.”

Kyle smiled politely. “I would like that, thanks.” Katy beamed at him and left, closing the door behind her, leaving Elayne suddenly painfully aware that this was the first time Kyle was in her room.

“You don’t have to come to dinner, you know. Don’t feel pressured,” she said.

Kyle gave her an easy smile. When had he started smiling that much at her?

“Nah, dinner would have been reheated pizza otherwise. This is much better.”

Elayne pulled a wicked grin. “You say that now, but you have no idea whether our cooking skills are non-lethal.”

-

Dinner turned out to be very much non-lethal, especially after Kyle saved the stuffed chicken they tried to make. They watched some sappy Christmas flick, the four of them squeezed into one couch under one blanket with Elayne pressed up against Kyle despite Katy sitting in her boyfriend’s lap. Afterwards the other two disappeared into Katy’s bedroom and Kyle and Elayne watched a couple of Terrence and Phillip Christmas specials, halfway through which Elayne wondered out loud if there are any Hanukkah-related movies.

Kyle’s answer was yes, but not very many, and Kyle had seen them all one to many times. There was one old T&P season with a Hanukkah special, so Elayne insisted on watching that as well.

It was late by the time Kyle left, and Elayne walked him to the door. She was feeling slightly buzzy from the spiked eggnog and the wine they had during dinner.

Kyle turned back towards her as he stepped into the hallway. “Thanks for having me, Christmas is always a bit of a thing for me.”

Elayne beamed. “No problem, thanks for saving me from third wheeling.” She paused, looking down at her shoes and softly adding, “and I’m sorry you had to see me like that this morning.”

Before she knew it, she was pulled into a hug again. Was this their new norm?

“Never apologize for feeling down. You can talk to me whenever.”

“Thank you.” It came out as a whisper, and Elayne wondered if Kyle had even heard it.

“Feel any better than this morning?”

Elayne stepped out of the hug and smiled. “Loads,” she said, looking out the window across the hall, “doesn’t change the fact that my cousin’s a total ass, though.”

Kyle chuckled. “You know, I have learned over the years that the best way to get back at people like your cousin, is to be happy, despite of them. The hardest you can hit them is when they realise they have no control over you.”

When Elayne pointedly looked at him with a raised eyebrow he chuckled again. “I know, I know. I am not the best at following my own advice.”

They chatted a little more before Kyle left. As Elayne closed the door behind her, she pulled the phone she hadn’t dared to look at all day out of her pocket.

There were over ten messages from Eric, all in the same style as the first one. Elayne let them all sink in, fingers hovering over the keyboard for a while, thinking of what Kyle had just told her, before she huffed and typed one message.

[00:35 – To Eric] _Merry Christmas to you too, Eric._

 


	5. Flirt

On the day after Christmas, Elayne hadn’t planned on seeking Kyle out. She still couldn’t believe he had witnessed her at her worst and that he had accepted it. Never mind that she had always found him attractive, or that he had always treated her well from the start. He had seen some of her darkest parts, and he had embraced it.

Literally.

The point was that she hadn’t planned on actively contacting Kyle, but when Elayne walked into the library to return a book, her gaze immediately fell on his bright red hair. Of course, since he had his back to her she could have still just returned her book and left, instead she felt herself pulled towards him like a magnet. That little voice that was always trying to tell her stuff she didn’t want to hear was getting louder but Elayne could still ignore it. She stood behind his chair, bent down and whispered in his ear.

“Tell me something I don’t know.” 

Kyle didn’t jump at the sudden question, he hadn’t for weeks. He just looked up at her over his shoulder with that hint of a smile he often wore.

“There is a word in Tagalog, _kilig_ , that is roughly translated as: the feeling of butterflies in your stomach, usually when something romantic or cute takes place.”

Well… that made her feel weirdly warm inside. Kyle had been in a literary streak for a couple of weeks now and whenever Elayne asked him her signature question, the answer was always related to some obscure detail in a language. Elayne straightened as she thought about it. “And where the fuck do they need a word to describe such a mushy feeling?”

Kyle smirked, understanding the underlying question. “The Philippines.”

Elayne couldn’t help herself and beamed down at Kyle. “I like that one, got any more of those?”

Kyle, the bastard, looked like he won some sort of contest. But as he went to answer, his neighbour cleared his throat, giving them both an annoyed look. Kyle chuckled, put his stuff away and stood up. Elayne was already confused as to what he was doing, but then he grabbed her arm and gently guided her to the exit of the library. It wasn’t until they had left that he bowed down slightly to talk to her, still walking.

“I have plenty of others like it, but not really suited for the library.” There was a slight edge to the way he said it that made Elayne’s brain stop in its tracks. That little voice tried to get even louder, but Elayne defiantly stomped it down. They walked in silence as Kyle led Elayne towards their favourite coffee shop on campus.

Kyle paid for both before Elayne could think to protest. What was wrong with her? She was supposed to be the one making him awe struck, not the other way around!

When they sat down at their usual table, Kyle started talking again, “So, more of the cheesy ones, right?” The look on his face shocked Elayne back into her usual behaviour. It was the look he reserved for when he was in a joking mood, and it always reminded Elayne of children conspiring to prank each other.

Elayne mirrored the expression. “Yes, please. Teach me, senpai.”

Kyle’s expression went mock serious, and he put on a teacher’s voice, "In Hungarian, when meeting someone for the first time and your intuition tells you that they are a good person, you can refer to them as ‘szimpatikus’.”

Less romantic, until Elayne realised Kyle’s face had taken on a soft expression and he wasn’t quite done talking, “That’s how I felt when I first met you.”

Elayne felt her throat and chest constrict. Her? A good person? She struggled to keep her face from showing any distress and tried to think of what to say, but Kyle continued.

“In Norwegian they have the word ‘forelsket’…” Kyle paused, seemed to think back on the proper definition of the word. It didn’t matter. Elayne just had to get back in the game and that meant her favourite form of defence. Flirting. No matter what Kyle said next, she _had_ to flirt.

“It’s the indescribable euphoria experienced as you begin to fall in love.” He said it with such a firm tone simply stating a fact, but with that little twinkle in his eye that he had when he knew he was sharing new information, Elayne finally felt that she would be able to act as she normally would.

“Awww, Kyle. If you wanted a date that badly, all you had to do was ask.” Elayne felt herself calm down as that blank look fell back into place. Good. That was what she was used to. It allowed her to think, although it didn’t alleviate that damn annoying little voice in her head, and it wasn’t good for her plan either to make Kyle revert to that facial expression just when he was being playful in a way that Elayne hadn’t encountered before. Elayne looked down at her cappuccino, thinking of a good subject to switch to.

“You know, I have a friend back home, Kenny. I think you would get along with him.”

Elayne frowned and looked up at Kyle. He still had that blank look on his face.

“What makes you say that?” She asked incredulously. Seriously, where did that come from?

Kyle smirked in a way Elayne had never seen before. The change happened in less than a second, and Elayne couldn’t exactly point out what was so different in the expression but it put her on edge. He leaned towards Elayne over the table, into her personal space until his mouth was right next to her ear. When he spoke, it had that edge to it again that Elayne had first noticed in the library.

“You have the same style of flirting.”

Elayne sucked in a full gulp of breath and as Kyle leaned back enough to look her in the eyes she finally recognized his expression for what it was; a mirror of the one she had been wearing whenever she had thrown flirty comments at him. The little voice in the back of her head exploded into a screaming choir, her racing heart nearly drowning out what Kyle said next.

“What? You didn’t really think I was _that_ dense, did you?”

Through pure willpower, Elayne managed to keep herself from blushing. Kyle’s face had, luckily for her, slipped back into a more neutral look. If you asked Elayne later how that conversation had ended, she wouldn’t be able to tell you, other than that she had somehow excused herself and practically ran out of the shop without drinking her coffee. She didn’t look back to see what expression Kyle had.

By the time Elayne got to her room she was bordering on hyperventilating. As she slammed the door behind her, Katy looked up.  Alarm showed on her face right away.

“What’s wrong?” She asked, concern clear in her voice. She stood up and put both hands on Elayne’s shoulders.

“I… I can’t,” Elayne managed to say.

“You can’t what?” Katy asked but before Elayne could answer she added, “you know what, it doesn’t matter right now. First, you need to calm the fuck down.”

Katy sounded calm as she said it but Elayne knew better. The use of swear words tipped her off. Katy didn’t swear unless she felt distressed. Nevertheless, Elayne let Katy talk her through some breathing exercises and after breathing in and out to her counting for a couple of minutes she felt a lot calmer.

Unfortunately, calmer also meant sadder. Katy seemed to notice this, since she planted Elayne on the couch and left for the kitchen only to come back with herbal tea a few minutes later.

“So, what happened?” she asked.

Elayne took a deep breath and spoke into her mug.

“He flirted back.”

“And that is a problem, because?” Elayne didn’t have to see Katy’s face to know what look she was giving her.

“It made me panic.”

Katy snorted at that. “That much is obvious, but why?”

Elayne looked at her reflection rippling as she breathed out over her tea. She just sat there, staring at nothing. Eventually, she started talking again in an unusually small voice.

“Because it forces me to admit I really like him.”

Apparently, her voice had gotten too small.

“Sorry, what?” That broke the dam that was holding in Elayne’s emotions for good.

“Because it makes me admit that I really fucking like him.” She said it louder than necessary, she knew that much, and once she started she couldn’t stop, “because he listens to what I say, and he is interested in who I am, and he comes to watch my fucking tennis games, and his smile is goddamn cute, and he is cute when he frowns because he doesn’t understand something, and he has a temper and he doesn’t take shit from me.” Elayne put her mug down and stood up somewhere halfway, her fingers in her hair, not caring that it would make the light brown waves go frizzy. She marched through the living area listing all the things she adored and hated about Kyle Broflovski. Katy let Elayne rage, following her progress up and down the room with knowing eyes. Finally, Elayne stopped, turned to look Katy in the eye and finished with, “and it doesn’t help that he’s fucking gorgeous!”

Katy took a sip from her tea before responding, “Okay, so we have established that you have something beyond a big crush on him.”

Elayne groaned and fell back down on her seat.

“What are you going to do about it?”

Elayne groaned again and dropped her head into her hands, elbows leaning on her knees.  “I have no fucking clue.”

“The way I see it, you have three options,” Katy started, “option one is that you continue what you planned, knowing that not only Eric will hate you, but so will Kyle.” A short pause made Elayne look up at Katy, who had a rather unforgiving look on her face, “which you could have known from the beginning would happen.” Elayne closed her eyes and dropped her head in her hands again.

“Option two, you abort completely. Find some reason to break off all contact with Kyle, hope this never makes it to Eric and pretend it never happened.” That didn’t sound appealing at all. Elayne was hoping option number 3 was more appealing. “Just so you know, I wouldn’t recommend either of these options as they will probably just make things worse.” Katy took a second to breath before she continued.

“Option three; you abort the mission and fess up to Kyle what happened. The whole truth, and then see if he will forgive you. If he does, great, if he doesn’t--”

“I get what I deserve.”

“I wasn’t going to put it like that but basically, yes.”

One of the good things about Katy was that she didn’t sugar-coat things. Still, telling Kyle everything? That would mean opening up to him on yet another level. She would be completely laid bare for him to judge. She would rather stand literally naked in front of the entire freshman class than be that vulnerable in a figurative sense with one person, even if that person was Kyle. But if this was her only chance to make this, in any way, right?

Elayne thought on it for a long time, unconsciously picking up her mug and sipping it, long enough for Katy to interrupt her thoughts again.

“Maybe you need to take some distance, go home for New Year’s Eve after all.”

“I don’t want to go home. That will just confront me with Eric. If anything, it will probably make me more determined to go through with it.”

“Hmmm… that could happen, I guess. But if Kyle isn’t going home for New Year’s either, you will just run into him again and you won’t be able to make a rational decision,” Katy looked sympathetic as she said it.

“Ugh, can’t believe I ever thought this would be a good idea,” Elayne groaned into the now empty mug. When did she even drink that tea? “Can’t I just transfer to some university in Europe or something? Never step foot on this continent again?”

Katy scoffed at that. “Now _that_ would be losing to your cousin.”

Ugh, she was right.

Elayne stared at her trembling hands some more. “You really think I will figure out what to do if I take some distance?”

Katy smiled and covered Elayne’s hands with hers. “Yes, I really do think that.”

And so, Katy was dropping her off at the airport 3 hours later, her suitcase filled up with as much winter clothes as it could fit.

 


	6. New Year's Eve

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey!
> 
> Sorry this took so long, it went through quite a few changes before me and my beta were both happy with it. 
> 
> Make sure to take a look at the new tags, since I suddenly realized there were some missing. 
> 
> Enjoy!!

“Eileeeeeenn.”

Elayne cringed internally; why’d Eric have to be the one to pick her up at the airport?

“That’s not my name, Eric,” she said half-heartedly.

Eric didn’t take her luggage, not that she would have let him. He just turned around and stalked off towards his car, expecting her to follow.

“Fuck it’s cold here.” Elayne rubbed her arms, even with her long-sleeved vest and her winter coat she was shivering.

“No shit, Sherlock, what did you expect?” Eric sneered as he opened the boot of the car. Elayne heaved her suitcase into it and made her way to the passenger side.

“So, how was the family Christmas?” Elayne asked in an attempt of civil conversation. Eric cast her a glare.

“Bored out of my fucking brains,” he said, “I really don’t know why I still bother going, there is no incentive at all since grandma died.”

Of course, the only reason he would ever go to any family gatherings was if there was some sort of profit to it.

They made semi-polite small talk during the ride to Elayne’s home until Eric had to ruin the tentative peace by asking, “So, have you build up to your old reputation yet? Screwing around with everyone there?”

Elayne grit her teeth but couldn’t help replying, “I may sleep around sometimes, but no matter what I do, I will never be as bad as Auntie Liane, Eric.”

She felt a wave of satisfaction as Eric’s face fell. “Shut up, slut.”

“Sure, Fatass.”

Eric slammed on the brakes and looked Elayne in the eye. “What did you just call me?”

Shit. Elayne had gotten so used to hearing Kyle refer to him as Fatass, she had copied it without meaning to. She scoffed, “You are fat and you are an ass. It seemed appropriate.” She glanced to Eric to see if he took her bluff and decided to add a little more. “What, did I push a button or something? Aww, Eric, never knew you were insecure about your weight, that’s so cute!”

Elayne kept a mischievous smirk on her face until Eric started driving again and Elayne could hear him mumble, “I’m not fat, I’m big boned.”

_Yeah, keep believing that, Fatass._

When they arrived at her house, Eric surprised her by carrying her luggage for her, though it was probably just to suck up to her mom. Before they entered however, Eric stopped her.

“Look, your mom got worried cos you sounded too goddamn depressed over the phone,” he started, looking for all intends and purposes like he was worried, too, but Elayne knew better by now. “So, she asked me to take you along to the party I am going to on New Year’s Eve.”

When Elayne looked like she was going to protest, he continued, “And that’s what’ll happen, cos I will be the one left with Viv’s nagging if I don’t. You don’t have a choice, Eileen. Capisci?”

“You do realize that’s not even Spanish?”

He narrowed his eyes at her.

 “Yeah, yeah, Eric. I got it. You are the best cousin a girl could ever wish for,” she said tonelessly, wanting the conversation to be over.

Over the next few days, Elayne let herself get pampered by her mother. Eric was out with friends most of the time, giving her the space to think. She carefully avoided looking at the messages streaming in from Kyle and she pretended to be enthusiastic about the party Eric was taking her to. It turned out to be a big gathering of students of the University of Denver.

Just before they left on the eve of the 31st, Eric stormed into the bathroom where Elayne was applying make-up, wearing an old pair of sweats and tank top. Her party outfit was on her bed.

“One more thing,” he said.

Elayne looked at Eric in the mirror, raising an eyebrow to indicate she was listening.

“A lot of my friends will be at this party,” he started, “you are not, in any way, allowed to flirt, snog, or have any other form of physical contact with them.” He glared his best glare at her. “Do you understand?”

“No seducing of any of your friends, got it.”

“Damn right! Especially Kinny, that dude is too poor, even for you.”

Wow, Eric was even more of a douche than she had always thought.

“No sleeping with poor people, got it.”

Eric followed her to her room after she was done with her make-up. “Anything else, Eric? Am I allowed to drink?” Elayne asked sarcastically.

Eric scoffed. “You can drink yourself into a coma for all I care.”  

“Thank you so much, oh great cousin, for your generous allowance of my drinking,” Elayne sneered, “can you leave my room now, so I can change, please?” Eric glared at her some more, then turned and left her room.

As soon as the door closed, Elayne turned around and picked up her phone. Even as she looked up Katy in her contact list, she could hear Kyle’s voice echoing in her mind.

_You know, I have learned over the years that the best way to get back at people like your cousin, is to be happy, despite of them. The hardest you can hit them is when they realise they have no control over you._

Elayne was done.

She was done with all the bullshit, and for once in her life she was going to do the right thing because, damnit, she’d go to hell before she turned into Eric.

Elayne sent two texts to Katy first.

[19:22 – To Katy D] _I made up my mind_

[19:23 – To Katy D] _I am going to tell Kyle everything._

Right after Elayne finished those texts she opened Kyle’s text streak and scrolled past all of them without reading them.

[19:25 – To Kyle <3] _Hey, I’m sorry for ignoring you, was immature. Can we talk when semester starts again? There is something I need to tell you._

Elayne pressed send before she could start doubting her decision, then threw on the faux leather leggings and the glittery dark grey tunic she had set aside for the party. She added a slightly lighter grey vest, picked up the pumps she had chosen, and took a glance in the mirror. Her light brown, almost amber eyes were accentuated by the smoky effect she had given them, and her hair was just on that edge between wild and classy. Some of the waves were pinned up, others strategically left to dangle around her. The best part was that it was all done with a single pin she could take out whenever she wanted to. Before she left her room, satisfied with her appearance, she picked up her smallest bag and shoved her phone into it.

Her mother gushed over how good she looked while Eric just tapped his shoe impatiently. The drive to the party was short, and Elayne lost Eric in the tangle of people within seconds.

Completely on accident, of course.

She made her way to one of the bars and ended up doing two successive tequila shots with a group of girls that looked to be her own age. Then ordered a beer and went to lose herself in the drum of people, dancing with whomever caught her attention. She caught glimpses of Eric every now and then, but simply turned and left for another room if he seemed like he was making his way over to her.

As she went to get a second beer, some guy in an orange parka walked up to her. How was that guy not fainting from the heat in here? And why did that parka seem so familiar? He walked to her with such purpose, though, that Elayne found herself stopping and waiting for him to reach her. When he stopped in front of her, she could see bright blue eyes. _Tiám,_ Kyle’s voice said in the back of her head, referring to the twinkling she could see in his eyes. What language was that again? Elayne couldn’t remember.

“hmmmngg n hgggmmm.”

“Sorry, could you repeat that?” Elayne asked, but his eyes just glittered more.

“hhmmm nn hhhmmmgnnn hhnn.”

Nope, that wasn’t any better. Elayne was deciding whether she would just turn around and leave this guy or ask him to speak up again when she heard an awfully familiar voice from behind her.

“Kenny, dude, you should know by now that flirting generally works better with your hood off.”

There was no mistaking that voice. Not when it was invading her every thought for the last couple of days, if not weeks.

Kyle’s voice kept drifting closer as he continued, “Sorry about him, he just can’t help the way he…is….” Kyle faltered as Elayne turned to look at him.

If just hearing his voice was a shock, seeing him was like a full-on ice-bucket challenge. He had tamed his hair for the event, dressed in dark jeans and a green dress shirt, and was looking at Elayne as if he’d seen a ghost. Next to him was a guy with dark hair who had one arm slung around Kyle’s shoulders and his other around the waist of a girl of similar hair colour. When Elayne turned back to the parka dude, she noticed he had taken the hood off, and was in the process of taking it off completely, just a simple black T-shirt beneath it. He had some tone of blond hair and had an infectious energy about him. When he saw her looking he smiled in a creepily familiar way.

“Hi,” he wiggled his eyebrows. Yes, way too familiar, that was _her_ signature move damnit, “checking out the goods, huh?” Kyle’s flirty friend Kenny. The other guy must be Stan, and his girlfriend… Wendy?

Why hadn’t Elayne realised that when Eric said his ‘friends’ were here, he meant his old South Park friends? He had even mentioned ‘Kinny’ and Elayne had still missed the implication somehow.

_Stupid. Stupid. Stupid._

Elayne mentally steadied herself and let her eyes slowly wander down Kenny’s body, playing along with his jab. Wait, Elayne looked down to the orange parka, now tied around his waist, didn’t this guy die when they were all at her grandma’s that one Christmas? She had assumed the current Kenny was a different one. No matter. Elayne looked slowly back up at his grinning face. Leaned in and whispered. “Do you want me to be?”

“Heck yeah!”

“Why?”

“Cause you’re fucking hot!”

Elayne burst out laughing at that, “Too bad for you then, but nope,” his face fell only a little and he took her hand as soon as she offered it.

“I’m Elayne, nice to meet you, Kenny.” She wiggled her eyebrows back at him. After a moment consideration and a sneak peek at Kyle, who still looked a little shell-shocked, she turned to Wendy and Stan and extended her hand to them as well. Stan dislodged his arm from Kyle’s shoulders to take hers.

“Stan, nice to meet you.” His eyes twinkled as well. He seemed nice enough. Wendy did the same. Hearing them introduce themselves to her felt weird, with how much Kyle and Eric had already told her, but Elayne went with it. She turned to Kyle then, weary of his reaction. Wondering whether he wanted his friends to know that he already knew her. She lifted one eyebrow lightly to indicate it was his move.

He seemed to come to his senses just in time to offer his hand without the delay being noticed.

“Kyle, nice to meet you,” he paused, “Elayne.”

The moment Elayne smiled, relieved that he had chosen this route for some reason, she felt a weight settle on her shoulders. She looked up to see Kenny had practically draped himself over her.

“So, you here alone? I know every girl that goes to these kinds of parties in Denver--” Kenny was interrupted by Stan grumbling something along the lines of ‘inside and out’ but continued as if there wasn’t an interruption at all. “--and I have never seen you before.”

Kenny’s expression seemed open, but Elayne caught the way his eyes drifted from her to Kyle and back with curiosity, if nothing else.

Elayne smiled. “I arrived here with someone, but he’s a douche, so I dumped him.”

Kenny’s smile went wider. “Good girl, someone like you has no need for putting up with douches.”

Elayne found herself smiling back. Kyle was right, she could totally see herself getting along with Kenny.

Wendy cut in then, “If you’d like, you can hang around with us during the party,” Elayne must have looked a bit alarmed, because Wendy added, “unless you already know people here, of course.”

Elayne quickly scanned the room, but saw no sign of Eric. Would it be safe for her to hang out with these people? Elayne glanced at Kyle, and it seemed that now he was over the shock of seeing her unexpectedly, he was genuinely happy to see her, so Elayne smiled again. “No, no. I’ll take you up on that. Thanks”

“Great!” Kenny almost cheered and he started steering Elayne away for some reason. “It was my turn to get the drinks. You come with me, so you can choose something for yourself.” Elayne grinned at that and let him lead her to the bar.

On the way there, Kenny leaned down to whisper in her ear, “Don’t know what’s gotten you this tense, but you need a drink, girl.” The moment he said it, Elayne became aware of the stiffness herself. Taking a deep breath, she forced the muscles of her shoulders and neck to relax.

Kenny chuckled, “That’s better, what do you want?”

Elayne told him to get another beer, but when they got to the bar, Elayne somehow ended up in front of Kenny, in a much better position to order. Just before it was her turn, she turned around and shouted, “What do I get for you guys?”

Kenny shouted at her to get beers, and was yelling something else but the bartender was looking at Elayne with an impatient look, so she tuned out Kenny’s voice to order.

“Five beers,” she said and after a moments consideration, added another request.

After the bartender loaded her order on a tray for her, she balanced it high above her head on one hand, her short experience as a waitress kicking in, and made her way back to Kenny. He looked kind of stumped.

“What’s wrong?” Elayne asked as soon as she was within ear shot.

“Was asking you to get tequila shots but you didn’t hear me.”

Elayne smirked and lowered the tray to show five tequilas in addition to the five beers, complete with lemon slices and salt. “Good thing I thought of them myself then.”

Kenny grinned like a Cheshire cat. “We think alike.”

“So it would seem.”

Kenny took the tray from her, and they made their way back to the group.

As they rounded the corner to the room where Kyle, Stan and Wendy were waiting for them, Elayne noticed right away that there was an unwelcome addition.

Eric.

Before Elayne had time to register what she was doing, her hand shot to Kenny’s elbow, halting them abruptly.

“Whoa there,” Kenny said, as he moved around to look at her. “You almost made me drop—” His eyebrows furrowed in concern at the panicked look she gave him. “What’s wrong?”

Elayne stared at Kenny, not knowing what to say. She couldn’t tell him the truth, she needed to tell Kyle first. She couldn’t tell Kyle right now, because Eric was right _there_ and she wasn’t sober, and why was it so hard to think right now?

“Elayne?” Kenny’s worried expression shifted from Elayne to the group and back, clearly connecting dots that he shouldn’t be connecting and Elayne really needed to say something before things got out of hand.

Maybe they already were.

Elayne let go of Kenny’s elbow and laughed weakly. “I just… I really hate that guy.”

She could feel Kenny’s calculating stare on her, but was too busy looking at Eric and Kyle who seemed to have gotten into an argument. She could see how tense Kyle was all the way from where she was, but when he straightened to cross his arms he seemed to be in control of his temper.

At some point Wendy intervened and Eric said something using both his hands to first point at Kyle and Stan, and then point towards the door before turning and leaving the group, moving to the exit of the room while taking his phone out of his pocket.

Elayne relaxed somewhat and eventually looked at Kenny again, who was still studying her with curious eyes.

“What?” Elayne asked, defensively.

Kenny shook his head and his expression turned cheerful again. “Nothing, let’s go.”

As they came to the group, the atmosphere was glum. Elayne took the beers from the tray and started distributing them.

“What was that about?” she asked, “Who was that guy?”

As she turned to get the last beer from the tray for herself, Elayne saw that Kenny was raising his eyebrows at her.

Shit, she was messing up all over the place. Maybe she shouldn’t be drinking this much in such a precarious situation.

Kyle bristled, but Stan was the one to answer, “Oh, that’s just Cartman, he’s an ass, be happy you don’t know him.”

_If only I were so lucky._ Elayne thought as she pulled her phone out of her bag, already expecting to find a text from Eric.

As Elayne pressed the button to activate the lock screen on her phone, she was vaguely aware of Stan explaining the situation to Kenny, “Fatass said he wanted to go to some other party a few blocks over. When Kyle said he wanted to stay, he got pissed, and said, ‘ _screw you guys, I’m outta here’_.” Stan imitated Eric’s voice for the last part, and Elayne had to fight to keep from giggling.

Her phone’s lock screen confirmed that she had a message from Eric, asking her where she was, and demanding to leave.

Elayne didn’t open the message. Didn’t even unlock her phone so that Eric wouldn’t know she had read it. With a defiant huff, she shoved the phone to the bottom of her bag to ignore it for the rest of the evening.

After that, Elayne mostly talked to Kenny, who she really did get along well with, though he kept glancing too-knowing looks between her and Kyle whenever they interacted. Kyle neither ignored her, nor seemed to give her extra attention. She danced with Kenny and Wendy. She stayed away from Stan, other than for conversation, sensing Wendy wasn’t the kind of girl you wanted to mess with.

She discovered Kenny was doing a community college forensic science course, which they bonded over immediately. She skirted around which university exactly she went to but talked about chemistry. She talked about tennis, and Kenny talked about playing basketball with Kyle. Then they danced some more. They checked out people together, Kenny pointing out increasingly douchebag-looking guys, with Elayne just laughing along. The only problem was that Elayne got the distinct feeling Kenny was observing her very closely, that he was figuring out way more than she wanted him to, and because of the amount to alcohol in her system, Elayne couldn’t even think clearly enough to distract him.

“What _is_ your type then?” Kenny asked, feigning exasperation after he had pointed out yet another douchebag, causing Elayne to wrinkle her nose in disgust. Elayne looked around, seeing Kyle was deep in conversation with Stan at that moment, before leaning up to Kenny’s ear. “Red-heads.” She leaned back to see that knowing look in his eyes and wiggled her eyebrows. 

Kenny grinned, “You little fox. I like you.”

“I just told you, you’re not my type.”

“Yeah, but too few people appreciate the wonder that is my friend Kyle.”

Elayne flinched as she suddenly felt an arm draped over her shoulder, causing Kenny’s smile to turn devilish.

“I don’t know what Kenny is telling you about me, but you probably shouldn’t believe it.”

Yup, definitely Kyle. Elayne looked up at him.

“What if he was telling me you’re an amazing kisser?” she arched an eyebrow for good measure, and Kenny burst out laughing.

Kyle glared at Kenny. “I would wonder where he got that information from.” He kept that frosty look on Kenny until the latter stopped laughing, before rolling his eyes and turning to Elayne. “It’s my turn to get drinks, more beer or something else?” Elayne was buzzing nicely, but more alcohol was not a good idea if she wanted to make it through tonight without doing anything stupid. “Nah, just get me a glass of water or soda.”

Kyle seemed to like that answer and when he came back to give Kenny his beer, he was holding not one but two bottles of water, which Kenny frowned at. Elayne accepted one and wanted to turn away to go talk to Kenny again, but Kyle had thrown his arm around her shoulder again and she couldn’t bring herself to shake him off as he led her a bit away from the group.

This was the first time they were alone that night.

Or as alone as two people in a building full of partying students could be.  

The point was that they were out of ear shot of Kenny, Stan and Wendy. Kyle seemed determined to keep it that way.

“I wasn’t expecting to see you here,” he said, his tone light.

“I could say the same to you.” What _was_ he doing here?

Kyle chuckled, “Well, a certain person I thought I was getting pretty close to suddenly started ignoring me, so my friends told me to come over to ‘live a little for once’.” He used the hand resting on her shoulder to emphasize the quotations. “Seems like maybe this person had the same idea?”

Elayne turned to face Kyle so abruptly that his arm dislodged from the shoulders and while Elayne missed the feeling instantly, she still took a step back to further the distance. “Can we please not get into this right now?”

“I thought you wanted to have a talk,” Kyle said.

Elayne frowned at him. “Yes, but not right now. I need to be sober for that,” she slurred a bit, “otherwise I’ll say stupid things.”

For a second, Kyle looked like he was going to protest but then said, “Fair enough.”

Elayne felt like she needed to say more, “Next time I see you and am sober, we will talk. I promise.”

Kyle smiled then, that smile Elayne had worked weeks for to see as much as possible.

They danced and chatted for a while after that, and Elayne was distinctly aware of Kenny watching the two of them. If she hadn’t known he was close friends with Kyle she would have thought it was slightly creepy.

It was an hour before midnight, and the night had been spent in a blur of dancing, and joking. And even though Elayne decided not to drink anything further, she noticed that whenever it was Kenny’s turn to get drinks (which was a lot more often than the rest of the group), he returned with something alcoholic for her anyway. Whenever Elayne told him something along the lines of, “Damn it, Kenny. I said I just wanted a diet coke,” he just gave her puppy dog eyes until she drank it anyway. The whole situation left Elayne a lot more drunk than she normally got.

Elayne was talking to Kyle in a corner when Kenny walked over to them with another tray of drinks balanced neatly on one hand.

“Elayne! Babe! What are you doing in this corner, keeping the best ass in South Park all to yourself,” he said, coming up behind Kyle and smacking said ass. “Don’t you know how to share?”

Elayne expected Kyle to sputter and protest about one of his friends touching him inappropriately, but instead a very familiar blank look appeared on his face.

“That was a list from middle school, Kenny. Let it go.”

“I could always ask Wends to round up the Pleases and Sparkles Club to make an updated list, but I can tell you now; the result will still be the same dude.” Kenny turned to Elayne. “Don’t you agree?”

Elayne was so distracted by the familiarity of Kyle’s reaction that she completely missed the question. Instead, she asked, “Does he always react like that?”

Kenny nodded at Kyle. “Yup, he used to be much more fun to tease. I think I left him sort of numb to flirting.”

“I’m right here, you know,” Kyle protested, face red.

Kenny laughed. “I know, and I got your order right here.” He handed Kyle a glass of soda, and Kyle took a drink right away, going through half the glass before lowering it with a frown.

“Kenny,” he started, and Kenny looked caught, “Why does this soda taste like there is alcohol in it?”

 “Oh, uhm. I don’t know, Kyle. Must be a mix-up at the bar.” Kenny turned his head around and started backing away. “Stan said Wends was looking for me,” he said, and when Kyle looked like he was going to protest he added, “something about tampons.” Elayne swore she could hear Kyle’s teeth snap from the speed at which he closed his mouth, even over the loud music.

And then Kenny was gone.

Elayne blinked before turning towards Kyle and dissolved into a fit of giggles at the disturbed face Kyle was making.

“Why would Wendy need Kenny for tampons?” he asked, causing Elayne to start giggling even louder.

By the time Elayne had controlled herself somewhat, Kyle was still looking at her with a confused expression and a raised eyebrow. It nearly sent Elayne into a new fit of giggles.

“It’s a trick women often use when they don’t want men intruding in their conversation to know what they--,” she started explaining, but Kyle just started looking more confused. “—You know what? Don’t worry about it, he’s just being stupid.” Elayne grinned and grabbed Kyle’s hand. “Come on, let’s dance.”

Kyle smiled and complied, and for a while all they did was dance, drink more of Kenny’s spiked drinks, and laugh.

Elayne was just enjoying herself until Kyle bowed down, placed his hands on her hips and whispered in her ear, “Tell me something I don’t know.”

Elayne’s breath hitched and she felt the blood rushing to her face. Before she could filter herself, she replied, “I was well aware that there’s an app that can tell me how to get to classes.”

Kyle smiled. “Try again.”

What? Elayne’s mind raced through the fog created by the alcohol, grasping for anything she could tell him. Were his hands really on her hips?

“My worst subject in high school was history.” Lame, but there were worse things she could have said.

Kyle grinned. “Really, now?”

Elayne blushed and, worse, felt herself become weak in the knees from the way he was looking at her.

At that moment, the music stopped and beamers started transmitting a television broadcast, showing it was three minutes to midnight. Elayne turned away slightly and tried to focus on the television but couldn’t quite get her mind away from the warm pressure she could still feel on her hips. Kyle had not removed his hands. When there was less than a minute left, Kyle whispered in her ear again, “Aren’t you going to ask me?”

“Ask you what?” Elayne was genuinely confused.

“I still had a good one left, prepared just for you.”

A light bulb switched on and Elayne faced Kyle fully again.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” she whispered just before the countdown started.

Kyle finally removed his hands from her hips and Elayne instantly missed their warmth.

“In Brazilian Portuguese,” he started as one hand cupped her jaw and the other reached into her hair. 10, 9.

“ _Cafuné,_ describes the act,” he pulled that single pin out of her hair, and Elayne could feel her waves tumbling down her back. 8, 7.

“Of tenderly running your fingers,” he dumped the pin in his breast pocket. 6, 5.

“Through the hair,” he gently weaved his fingers though her locks, and Elayne’s breath stopped altogether. 4, 3.

“Of someone you love.” 2, 1.

Elayne came back to her senses the moment she felt his warm lips on hers. Kick starting into action, she threw her arms around his neck and pulled herself flush against him. When she did, she felt Kyle’s lips pull up in a smile against hers. All around her cheers sounded to lead in the new year. Somewhere in the back of her head, Elayne knew that this probably wasn’t the best idea, considering what she had decided before going to the party. But right there and then, as she pulled away just a fraction to whisper a quick ‘Happy new year’, only to feel Kyle’s lips on hers again almost immediately, she couldn’t be bothered to care.

 


	7. The Morning After

As Elayne woke up the next morning, feeling severely hung-over, she noticed she was hugging a rather warm, human shaped pillow. A warm, human shaped pillow that breathed. She tentatively opened first one eye, then the other, a pale chest and chin coming into view. When her eyes shifted upwards, she noticed ginger curls.

Flashes of kisses came back to her, quiet whispers, snippets of skin gliding over skin in a way that had Elayne flushed all over again.

Right. That happened.

She looked around trying to remember where she was. Kenny had mentioned at some point that Kyle was staying at the apartment he and Stan were sharing. So that would be her first guess.

Pushing down the rush of panic that threatened to overcome her, she took a deep breath. This was not a problem… yet.

She just needed to make sure Eric didn’t find out before she got back to Stanford. Then she could have her talk with Kyle, and maybe he would forgive her.

If he didn’t…

Elayne didn’t want to think about that. 

She slowly sneaked out of Kyle’s arms and sat on the edge of the bed, allowing time to cure the low blood-pressure induced haze and willing her headache to go away.  

Just as she was about to stand up, two arms wrapped around her waist and a severely sleepy voice whispered in her ear, “Where are you going?”

Elayne flushed at being caught and, if she were being honest with herself, at the effect just his voice had on her. Maybe waiting until they were back at Stanford wasn’t such a good idea after all. Maybe she should just fess up right here, right now and take her chances Kyle would not hate her. She opened her mouth to start talking but the arms around her tightened and so did her throat.

No.

Better to wait until they were far away from Denver. Elayne turned her head to catch the kiss Kyle aimed below her ear on her lips instead. “Going to see if I can take a shower, I don’t know about you, but I still have stuff to do today,” she whispered.

It was a lie of course, but what else could she do at this point? “You don’t look ready to wake up yet, why don’t you go back to sleep.”

It seemed Kyle had that same morning blood-pressure problem as Elayne, because he was asleep again the moment his head hit the pillow.

When Elayne entered the living room wearing Kyle's old South Park Cows hoodie and one of his boxers, she saw Kenny was already up making coffee, confirming that she was, in fact, in his and Stan’s apartment.

“You’re up early,” he told her, raising an eyebrow in question.

Elayne let out a sigh, she had better continue the lie, “I still have some papers to finish before the classes start again. Much as I would like to, I can’t really sleep in.” She made her way over to where she had dropped her bag on the previous night, and took out her phone.

Empty.

“What about you?” She countered, digging for her charger.

“Have an afternoon shift, so have to leave for work soon,” Kenny answered sleepily. “Want some coffee?”

Well that couldn’t hurt anyone, now could it? Elayne accepted the offer as she asked Kenny if she could charge her phone.  She sat at the bar and plugged her iPhone in, waiting for it to charge enough to boot it up and then doing so. Just as she unlocked her screen, Kenny stood in front of her.

“Soooo,” he started as he placed the mug, milk and sugar in front of her, grin creeping onto his face, “Trying to sneak out, are you?”

Elayne had been focused on adding sugar and milk to her coffee but her gaze shot up to Kenny’s and felt blood rushing to her face.

“How do--” she caught herself, but obviously not in time as Kenny’s grin turned positively Cheshire.

“You think I don’t know what sneaking out after a one-night stand looks like? I’m the king of sneaking out, and darling, you ain’t doing it right,” he said, and Elayne decided it was safer to study her coffee. Kenny was having _way_ too much fun with this. “So, you know, if you ever want to pretend not to care again, don’t even go to sleep. Works much better that way,” Kenny added, still keeping a critical eye on the brunette.

“Yeah, I know.” Elayne didn’t mean to sound as resigned as she did.

Kenny’s smirk went, impossibly, even wider.

Suddenly coffee didn’t seem like a good idea. Elayne groaned, pushed the mug aside and planted her face on the bar.

“It wasn’t supposed to go like this,” she mumbled into the bar.

Kenny stopped snickering and for a while she was free to think of the mess she had made of things. On one hand, she was on the verge of unintentionally one-upping Eric, but her feelings for Kyle wouldn’t allow her to just use him like that. That was why she had gone to Denver for New Year’s in the first place. Because she needed to rethink this whole thing. Having Kyle magically appear in front of her was _not_ part of the plan.

“You really like him, don’t you?” Kenny interrupted her circling thoughts.

“How do you keep doing that?” She countered, sitting back up giving Kenny an annoyed look.

“Do what?”

Elayne sighed; her walls were crumbled if it was this easy for Kenny to read her, “Pinpointing exactly what I’m thinking.” Elayne looked on as Kenny’s somewhat concerned expression morphed back into that infernal Cheshire grin.

“I told you yesterday, didn’t I? We think alike. Besides, I’ve never met a girl who didn’t go weak in the knees at the sight of me topless. I mean, my chest is down here.” To prove his point, he thumbed his chest, which was indeed bare. And impressive.

How did she miss _that_?

“Well, ok, fair point,” Elayne countered, needing some momentum back in this conversation, “though, you need _something_ going for you; god knows your flirting skills are crap.”

Kenny gasped in mock offence and Elayne threw a cheeky grin at him, before she felt her face slipping again, her thoughts returning to the guy she left in the bedroom behind her. Kenny let her think in silence for a while.

Eventually he asked, “What did you mean, it wasn’t supposed to be like this?”

Shit. Elayne had hoped he hadn’t heard that part. She carefully kept her eyes on her mug as she considered telling Kenny about the situation.

Elayne glanced at the door to the bedroom.

“He probably won’t wake up for a while, you can talk.”

And there he went again, catching her thoughts before she was done thinking them. Seriously, maybe Kenny was psychic or something. Elayne turned to Kenny to tell him off for poking into her business too much, but the gentle look in his eyes made her reconsider. She looked back down at the coffee mug.

After a while she started hesitantly, “I said that because everything would have been so much easier if Kyle had been what I expected him to be.”

“What did you expect?”

Elayne smiled sadly. “Everything except what he’s actually like.”

She had expected him to be boring, and selfish, and annoying, and everything Eric had and hadn’t told her about Kyle over the years. Before she had first seen him, she hadn’t assumed him to be attractive at all, but he was.

“And what _is_ my dear friend Kyle like, at Stanford?” Elayne’s eyes shot back up to Kenny’s, alarm showing clearly.

“He told you about me?” She asked, confused, “Wait, no, how did you know I’m going to Stanford?

“Hon, I’ve known Ky my entire life. Unlike you and me, he’s not the type for one-night stands,” Kenny said. “Besides, he _did_ tell us about the girl he met at Stanford. Enough to recognize you even if you hadn’t darting around each other like two love-sick puppies all night.”

“That obvious, huh?”

“A blind man could tell you have feelings for him.” Kenny grinned.

“Yeah, well. Feelings weren’t part of the plan, so—”

“Wait. What plan?” Kenny interrupted her.

Elayne felt all her muscles lock up. Of course. She should have known Kenny would notice that part. That infuriating little voice at the back of her head that she had grudgingly come to acknowledge as her conscience scoffed, _Walls down? More like demolished by now._

She was sure she was doing a pretty impressive impersonation of a deer in the headlights, and Kenny chuckled.

“If you had grown up around Cartman like we have, you would know to be suspicious whenever the word plan is involved,” Kenny paused, “but considering how you reacted when you saw him last night, you probably _do_ know.”

That broke the last vestiges of Elayne’s self-control, and she started giggling.

“What’s so funny?” Kenny asked after a while, sounding thoroughly confused.

“You keep calling him Cartman,” Elayne answered, struggling to talk between giggles. she looked Kenny in the eye and took a deep breath in an attempt to calm her broken self. “And then you keep telling me what to expect when handling him, but you see, to me, that sounds fucking weird…” Elayne paused again, and finally managed to stop giggling. “Considering that my name is Elayne Cartman.”

Kenny went completely still.

“And I know what my cousin is like, better than most people.”

There it was. Elayne had told him, and Kenny just looked at her, his expression unreadable, Leaving Elayne to wait for his judgement.

“You’re his cousin?” Kenny eventually asked, to which Elayne merely nodded.

More silence followed, until Kenny heaved a big sigh and said, “I knew I recognized you from somewhere.”

Elayne cocked her head, but didn’t need to ask the obvious question.

Kenny explained. “When I saw you yesterday, I felt like I’d seen you somewhere before. I just realized I saw pictures of you when I went to pick up Kyle’s little brother from Cartman’s…” Elayne raised an eyebrow at Kenny, causing him to backtrack. “I-I mean your place… I guess…”

“Damn right, my place,” Elayne said. “That was freaking weird, by the way, finding out Ike slept in my room, and Kyle had no clue.”

“And you didn’t think to tell him, at that point?”

“Of course I did. But how do you tell a guy you’re crushing on that you’re his teenage arch nemesis’s cousin?” Elayne fought to keep her voice down. “Besides, at that point I hadn’t abandoned the plan yet.”

Kenny frowned. “Right, the plan. What plan? I still don’t like that word.”

“I bet you like it even less now that you know who I am.”

“Not the point, and don’t change the subject. What. Plan.”

Elayne didn’t know why she was still struggling. She had lost her defense mechanisms and found herself completely vulnerable.

“It’s a long story,” she mumbled.

“Better start talking then.”

So, she did. She told him the whole thing, and as she did, she could see his view of her change. Could see it in his eyes. He didn’t interrupt much, only asked a few questions here and there, but mostly he just let her talk.

When she finished, he just looked at her for what must have been only a couple of seconds, but felt like an eternity to Elayne.

“So, you’re telling me that you got close to one of my best friends, made him fall for you massively, all because of some petty feud you have with Eric _fucking_ Cartman, and you thought this was a good idea?”

Elayne groaned and resisted the urge to face plant on the counter again. “At the time.”

“And correct me if I’m wrong, but you were going to make Kyle take the fall for it, weren’t you?”

Elayne’s silence was all Kenny needed apparently.

“That’s very fucking Cartman of you.”

Well, wait a minute. “N-no, Kenny, I-“

“What? Kyle wasn’t supposed to be your scapegoat?”

Elayne frowned at the mere idea of it, but couldn’t outright deny it either.

“It wasn’t like Kyle was in any danger,” she found herself defending.

“Don’t kid yourself. We’re talking about the guy that made his half-brother eat his parents for making him look like a fool,” Kenny countered calmly. “Of course Kyle was in danger. Especially Kyle.”

“It’s not my fault Kyle has antagonized Eric as much as he has over the years.”

“No, it just made him your perfect target.” Elayne wouldn’t have guessed Kenny’s voice could go this deep, or that his eyes could be this dark. “Besides, as if you haven’t aggravated him just as much.”

“That’s not the point!” Elayne struggled to keep her voice down.

“Really? Cause I think it is. I think you can’t help it and I think you are aware that you can’t help it. That’s why you ran away.” Kenny leveled her with his gaze and Elayne felt the instinctive need to fight bleed out of her, but she wanted to cling to it. “I think that’s why both of you ran away. Kyle and you are the same in that sense.”

“If that’s true, he should be glad to help get to Eric for once.”

“Not if he’s not even aware of it, or without his consent. But you didn’t ask for his consent, because you knew he wouldn’t have given it.”

Elayne wanted to growl in frustration. Even if she had the presence of mind to make her arguments even remotely logical, she still doubted Kenny would have listened to her.

“Why are we even having this conversation? It isn’t like Kyle needs you to defend him. He’s an adult, he can take care of himself,” she said.

“Because, my dear girl, despite that we’re talking about a psychopath here, Kyle’s physical well-being isn’t the thing I’m most worried about. He might not show it much, but he does have a _heart_ , Elayne. One that’s about to get broken when you confess all this shit.”

“Which is why I decided not to go through with the plan.” As she said it, Elayne felt the last of her resistance melt away.

Kenny wasn’t done yet though. “Oh, you decided _not_ to go through with it. Well excuse me for drawing the wrong conclusion seeing you walk out of his bed. You were just playing scrabble all night long, obviously.”

At this, Elayne groaned and finally gave in to the urge, slumping forwards to lean her face against the counter again. “I was drunk and Kyle was being smooth as fuck, how was I supposed to resist that?”

“Are you seriously blaming alcohol for your mistakes right now?” Kenny asked.

“Well, no. But if I had known in advance that I would run into you guys at that party, I wouldn’t have drunk as much.” Elayne frowned. “People do stupid things on alcohol, I’m not stupid enough to think I’m an exception to the rule.”

Kenny narrowed his eyes at her. “If you weren’t in Denver to find Kyle, why _were_ you here?”

“To get away from him,” Elayne said immediately, “I came to the conclusion that I couldn’t bear to use him like that. Like you said, it was wrong to even consider it. But I was in so deep by that time, I didn’t know what I could do. So, I came home to think it over.”

Kenny was quiet for a long time after that, and Elayne just sat there in silence.

What had she done?

How would she fix it?

She had no idea.

Elayne noticed her phone lighting up and picked it up to see a whole string of messages coming in.

“Can you prove to me that you are not in this with Eric?” Kenny suddenly asked, his voice back to its usual pitch, though his posture wasn’t as open as it was before.

Elayne sighed, unlocked the phone, and slid it to Kenny so he could read her chat with Eric. Elayne tensed as Kenny got up without a word after scrolling through the messages, but he just walked past her mumbling, “I can’t believe I’m not throwing you out.” And disappeared into what must be his room before returning with a towel.

“Why don’t you take some time to calm down with a long shower, and after that we can talk about how to clean up this giant mess you’ve created?”

Elayne just numbly nodded, took the towel, and disappeared through the door next to the one she had originally come from. Just before she closed the door Kenny called out to her, “Elayne?” She looked back at him. “Sorry about feeding you drunk.”

Elayne thought about that before shrugging. “I could have said no,” she said, before closing the door.

-

As Elayne disappeared through the bathroom door, Kenny stared at the spot she had vacated.

That was a lot of information to process, and Kenny felt like he had been sucker-punched repeatedly throughout the conversation.

But despite all her faults, Kenny saw the way Elayne looked at Kyle. She had the look of someone in _way_ deeper than she expected to be, and while Kenny was sure she had not sugar coated her own story, he was also sure she no longer operated on the motivations that had started her on this path. From what Kenny could tell, she was completely smitten, and so she was also forgiven.

It had obviously messed up her plan, stupid as it was

Kenny still felt anger at the way she had tried to use his friend, but having known Cartman as long as he had, he also kind of understood where she came from. He bet it was even worse for a family member.  

Just as he finished his second coffee, the front door opened and Stan came in, kicking off his sneakers and dropping his coat on the couch, distracting Kenny from his musings.

“Morning Ken.”

“Morning Stan, wouldn’t go in there if I were you,” Kenny said as he noticed Stan was making his way to the bathroom.

“Why not?” Stan asked, and when he heard the shower turn on he added, “who did you take home this time?”

Kenny held up both hands. “Not me dude, Kyle took that lady from yesterday with him.” He couldn’t help but grin at Stan’s expression. It could only be described as a proud parent. Stan really was a bit too naïve for his own good. Or maybe he was just too much of a romantic. Either way, he never noticed when girls were with guys for the wrong reasons until it was too late. He didn’t seem to see anything wrong with the situation this time either.

“He did? Good for him!”

Kenny nodded. The drama that Kenny knew was coming was Kyle’s and Elayne’s business, and he wasn’t about to gossip to Stan.

“Did Wendy catch her flight okay?” he asked.

“Yeah. Don’t know why she booked a flight at this god forsaken hour, though. I’m going back to bed, as soon as I’ve taken a piss, to take a three-hour nap.” Stan sat down in Elayne’s old spot and looked down at the phone. “Dude, why is Cartman texting you?”

Kenny paused, looking at the phone Elayne had unlocked for him. Cartman’s Facebook profile picture looked up at him and he scooped the phone up.

“This is not my phone,” he answered.

He read the chat that was opened, including the new addition to the texts Elayne had shown him earlier.

[19:55 – From Eric] _Where are you? Can’t find you anymore._

[20:50 – From Eric] _Not funny El, seriously, I thought you weren’t sure about this party because you don’t know anyone, so don’t avoid the only person you DO know like this._

[21:15 – From Eric] _Look, this party sucks ass, we’re leaving for a better one._

[21:20 – From Eric] _You coming, or what? I’m at the entrance._

[21:25 – From Eric] _Screw you, I’m leaving. Pay your own damn Uber home._

[00:15 – From Eric] _Happy new year slut_

[00:30 – From Eric] _You coming home at all_

[01:06 – From Eric] _Coz you know, Viv is getting worried._

[02:30 – From Eric] _What evs you’re probably just slutting yourself out somewhere._

[08:05 – From Eric] _El, I am seriously, where the fuck did you go last night?_

[08:08 – From Eric] _Viv’s freaking out._

[08:10 – From Eric] _like, pulling at her hair freaking out. And blaming me._

[08:13 – From Eric] _Fuck Elayne don’t make me track your phone._

[08:18 – From Eric] _Fucking bitch, I knew it._

[08:20 – From Eric] _If you did what I think you did I will fucking strangle you._

[08:24 – From Eric] _Fuck you El. I’m on my way so you better be prepared._

That last three had been sent after he had read the chat the first time, and Kenny felt himself go into panic mode. Never mind figuring out how to deal with the situation after Elayne was done with her shower; they were going to have to wing it. Considering the distance between their apartment and the Cartman house, and the time since he had send the message that he was on his way, they had virtually no time left to figure out what to do. Since when did Cartman know how to track phones, anyway?

“It’s fucking happening again, isn’t it?” Stan whispered, as he had read the messages over Kenny’s shoulder.

Kenny groaned. “You really don’t wanna know.”

“Try me,” Stan countered.

“No time for that, Cartman is on his way here.”

“Fuck.”

Kenny sighed. “Think we can get this over with without waking up Kyle?”

“Not if Cartman starts shouting,” Stan said as loud knocks on their front door told them time was up.

Kenny considered making Cartman wait in favor of waking Kyle up, but the knocking morphed into full on banging and Stan opened the door before Kenny could protest.

“Where the fuck is she?” Cartman asked, ignoring Stan to glare at Kenny over Stan’s shoulder. Kenny couldn't remember the last time he had seen him this pissed.

“Good morning to you too, Cartman,” he replied casually. “Who do you mean?”

Cartman's eyes narrowed and he tried to get past Stan. “Cut the innocent crap, Kinny. There is no way it's a coincidence that the little slut's phone is in this building. She has to be here.”

Kenny was painfully aware that he couldn’t hear the shower anymore. He realized he didn't know just how long he hadn't heard it.

“Sorry dude, I’m not aware of any sluts in my apartment.” Kenny tried hard to look as bored as possible, but he froze as he heard a door unlock behind him and open.

“Fuck you Kinny. Is Eileen here or not?”

That got Kenny confused, until he heard Elayne behind him.

“My name. Is _not._ Eileen.” Elayne was leaning against the doorway to the bathroom, hair wet, redressed in Kyle's hoodie and boxers.

It took but a second for Cartman to explode. He started yelling at her as he tried to get past Stan and into the apartment. “You fucking bitch! I told you. I told you yesterday not to do this! I told you not to mess with my friends. How dare you, you little slut. You should respect my—"

“You have no authority over me, Eric. You never will. I can do whatever the fuck I want.” She paused, standing straight and looking at Eric defiantly, “actually, I can do whoever the fuck I want for that matter.”

“Fuck you Elayne, I told you Kinny was too poor for you. If you're going to be a slut at least slut your way up.”

Kenny decided he was very happy Stan was the only one in reach of Cartman, as he wasn't sure whether Cartman was keener to get to him or to the girl that was starting to look more scared than defiant. She wasn't going down without a fight though, as she lifted her chin and said, “There is absolutely nothing wrong with Kenny, Eric.” Her face transformed to challenging again. “Besides, what makes you think I slept with _him_?”

Kenny turned his attention back to the Fatass being restrained by Stan, suddenly feeling like he should be interfering with this conversation, but also feeling it was up to Elayne to fix her own damn mess.

Cartman scoffed, “Well it sure as hell ain’t Stan if Testaburger is here, and people saw you leave with someone in an orange coat.”

Elayne laughed, but it sounded forced to Kenny. “Well tough luck, Fatass, I didn't sleep with Ken.” She pointed at the opening guestroom door with her thumb, from which a drowsy but dressed Kyle emerged. “I slept with him.”

There was a second of dead silence, in which Kenny wanted to slam his palm to his forehead in exasperation. Stupid girl.

“Kahl.”

The last time Kenny had heard that tone of voice had been during the whole Heidy Turner fiasco, and the next second, Cartman had wrestled his way past Stan and was charging towards Kyle and Elayne, who were standing next to each other.

Almost in slow motion, Kenny watched him get closer and closer to the two, too stunned to do anything himself. Kenny didn’t know if Cartman was going after Elayne or after Kyle, but Kyle was closer and, in a reflex, hit Cartman straight in the jaw, knocking him out.

The silence that followed was deafening as Kenny met eyes with Stan, who looked just as shocked as he felt.

It was Kyle that broke the silence.

“Now, correct me if I am wrong, but I’m having a _major_ Deja-vu here. Why the fuck did I knock Fatass out _this_ time?” he asked sleepily.

Kenny opened his mouth to explain, but Stan started talking first, “Dude, you slept with Cartman’s girlfriend.” Elayne’s head whipped around to stare at Stan in shock as he added, “again.”

Kyle’s turned to Elayne, who’s face scrunched up in disgust. “Ew, no way man. Why the hell would I do him? He’s my cousin.”

“The cousin you told me about was Cartman?” Kyle asked quietly, a tone Kenny had never heard his friend use before, and which made several mental alarms go off. Elayne must have noticed it too, for all color disappeared from her face.

“Kyle…“

“Answer the question Elayne.”

All energy seemed to leave Elayne. Her shoulders slumped and she looked down at her toes. Kenny wondered what happened to that defiance she had showed when facing Cartman, and even before, when she had stubbornly tried to defend herself against him.

“Yes,” she muttered.

Kyle’s face was turning red, showing the type of rage Kenny usually only saw directed at the knocked-out lump of flesh on his floor. He also noticed that Kyle was clenching his fists, almost shaking with the effort, and Kenny knew Kyle well enough to know he was trying his best to hold himself back. “How long have you known who I was?”

Elayne flinched at the question but remained silent. Kyle walked in front of her and peered down. Kenny was very glad not to be on the receiving end of that glare.

“Answer me, Elayne.”

She flinched again, before visibly steeling herself and looking Kyle in the eye.

“From the moment I saw your name on your notebook in our first statistics lecture. Maybe even before.”

Kyle looked like she had slapped him. “How?”

“We met when you all went to my grandma’s for Christmas when you were nine.”

Kenny looked at Stan in question, who raised his shoulders to indicate he couldn’t really remember Cartman’s extended family either.

“Was this what you wanted to talk about?”

Elayne had dropped her eyes to her toes again. “Among other things.”

“You said you had a plot to get back at Cartman, did it involve me?”

Elayne looked up and Kenny noticed she had silent tears streaming down her face, the anger he had felt towards her faded away at the heartbreaking expression.

“Yes.”

Kenny had to give it to her, she did not back down from Kyle, despite the way he was towering over her in his rage; fists clenched, lips pressed in an impossibly thin line.

“So you came here with the express purpose of getting me into bed to annoy Fatass.”

Elayne seemed appalled by the idea. “What? No! I didn’t even know you were leaving Stanford.”

Kyle deflated a little, his angry posture not quite leaving him. “Why would I believe that?”

Elayne closed her eyes, leaned against the wall behind her and slid down until she was sitting on the floor, Kyle still looking down at her.

The silence was interrupted by a groan from Cartman, and Kyle looked over at him and back to Elayne, before making his way over to Cartman and starting to lift him up. “Stan, help me get him in his car and get him home.”

Stan hadn’t looked away from Elayne yet, and seemed to fight to get over the shock of what had just happened. “Yeah, sure. Follow me in my car, so we can get home afterwards.”

Kyle nodded and together they managed to lift the deadweight boy. Just before they left the door, Kyle turned his head.

“Elayne, I want you gone by the time I get back.”

Elayne dropped her head on her knees. “Yeah, ok.”

As the door closed behind Kyle, Kenny felt helpless in the situation they had been thrown in. He realized he was still holding Elayne’s phone when it vibrated in his hand. He looked down to see the incoming message. The chat seemed to be a pretty regular one, but Kenny’s eyes were drawn to the messages of the day before.

[19:22 – To Katy D] _I made up my mind_

[19:23 – To Katy D] _I am going to tell Kyle everything._

[20:35 – From Katy D] _I knew you would make the right decision! Now go enjoy that stupid party, there’s bound to be some nice people there!_

[00:05 – From Katy D] _HAPPY NEW YEAR!_

[07:35 – From Katy D] Elayne, _you okay? Haven’t heard from you since yesterday._

[08:42 – From Katy D] _I heard from Kyle’s roommate that he went to Denver as well. Please tell me you didn’t do anything stupid last night_

Kenny wanted to hug the girl that obviously had the sense to steer Elayne in the right direction, but also sighed at her last message. “Oh, girlfriend. You have no idea.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys!
> 
> First off, sorry this took so long to get posted. You guys weren't the only ones worried about Kyle's reaction when he finally finds out. this has been edited, re-edited, cut and just generally looked very different when I first wrote the story. 
> 
> Anyway, since I now officially have summer vacation, I should have some more time to polish the final few chapter in a somewhat more speedy manner, and there will be some other fics posted in the near future as well (mostly K2). 
> 
> hope you enjoyed this chapter! ^^


	8. Aftermath

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys!
> 
> Sorry this took so long, I got kinda distracted by k2 week and then burned myself out a bit by writing a chapter per day for that. Only two more to go, we'll get there eventually ^^.

Kyle liked to think he had grown up a fair bit since he left for university. He rarely got into a fight since he graduated high school, usually managing to get his point across in arguments without losing his temper. He missed his friends of course, especially Stan, but the longer he spent in California, the surer he became that he’d made the right decision.

Which was why he was at a bit of a loss as to what to do with the rage flying through his veins right then.

He _had_ grown up. Which was why he did _not_ squeeze Cartman’s shoulders more tightly than strictly necessary while carrying him to his car. And he also did _not_ bump Cartman’s head against the passenger door of his own car purposely.

Okay, maybe he did. He wasn’t sure at this point.

As Stan closed the door of Cartman’s car he looked like he was about to say something, but Kyle just turned and fished Stan’s car keys out of his pocket.

It took all of Kyle’s willpower not to scratch the keys into the side of the shiny pick-up, and the only way Kyle managed to walk away from the car was by chanting the mantra he used throughout the last few years of high school.

_You’re better than him, not worth it. You’re better than him, not worth it. You’re better than him, not worth it._

Kyle kept repeating it to himself as he followed Stan through Denver traffic. It was less effective than it used to be, and Kyle had to consciously relax his fingers from his iron grip on the steering wheel to shift gears on Stan’s manual.

The reason it wasn’t working was obvious. He could pretend all he wanted, but for once, Cartman wasn’t to blame for his anger.

No.

_A_ Cartman was to blame, just not the one he was used to.

He couldn’t believe this. How did he not see it? Looking back, the two cousins were _exactly_ the same. Same eye and hair color. Equal tempers, and both evil masterminds. He should have known, should have noticed.

Kyle forcefully kept his focus on the road. Years of single minded studying allowing him to block out the one thing he struggled not to think of.

He stared at the car in front, wishing for the first time since they all played superheroes at ten that he had laser eyes and could just fry the damn eye-sore.

At a traffic light, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath, trying to get the anger under control.

He’d known Cartman nearly his entire life, how did he not notice that he was just another chess piece in a sick game?

The honk of the car behind him made him look to see the light was green, and that Stan had already passed the intersection.

“Shit,” Kyle mumbled to himself, and nearly allowed the engine to stall in his haste, pressing the clutch to try again.

Stan and his fucking manual obsession.

Kyle realized in that moment that he shouldn’t be driving in the first place, his anger clouding his ability to be aware of the traffic around him. Thankfully, they arrived at their destination two turns later, where Stan parked Cartman’s car in front of a small, but well-kept house.

The smirk on Stan’s lips told Kyle that he had noticed Kyle’s misstep in handling his car at the intersection, but Kyle was in no mood for their usual bickering.

“Should we wake the Fatass up?” He asked as he got out of Stan’s still running car.

Stan looked in through the passenger window and shrugged. “We probably should.”

Kyle glared at Cartman’s unconscious form. Even if he technically knew Cartman wasn’t to blame in this instance, it still felt satisfying to channel all his righteous fury at him.

“Actually, maybe you should leave the waking to me,” Stan said, causing Kyle to redirect his glare to his best friend, before taking what felt like his tenth deep breath of the day, then turning and marching to the passenger side of Stan’s car.

He really shouldn’t have driven in this state.

Kyle purposely avoided looking at the car as Stan went about waking Cartman up, but that didn’t prevent him from hearing his complaining once Stan succeeded. By the time Stan sat down in the driver’s seat, Kyle had crossed his arms, the fingers digging into his skin shaking from the effort.

“Dude, what the fuck? You didn’t even put the heating on.”

Kyle could feel Stan’s eyes on him and shrugged. “Didn’t feel cold.”

“You’re not wearing your coat; how can you not be freezing?” A couple of pressed buttons later, the vents started blowing warm air, and Stan started driving back.

Throughout the drive, Kyle kept his gaze out the side window, staring at the houses passing by without seeing them. His arms stopped shaking at some point, more due to the increase in temperature than due to any calming on Kyle’s end.

“Are we going to talk about this?” Stan asked about halfway back to his apartment.

“No.”

“Dude, I think we need to.”

“I said no.”

“Alright.” Stan seemed to give in, and Kyle relaxed just a little, but he should have known better. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“You sure?”

“I’m. Fine.”

“You don’t seem fi—”

“I’M FINE!” Kyle turned to yell at Stan, feeling a slight pang of guilt at the way his best friend jumped in his seat. “Jesus, why can’t you just leave it be?”

Stan didn’t answer until after he parked the car at the side of the road. “Because I just drove halfway across town in Cartman’s car with him unconscious in the passenger seat for you, dude.”

“So?”

“So? Dude! Cartman drives an _automatic_ , you made me drive an automatic.”

Kyle frowned. “It’s not like I asked you to drive his car.”

“No! You didn’t have to. Because we both know that you’d have ‘accidently’ opened the door against a tree or something.”

“Just leave me alone, Stan.”

“Not gonna happen.” Stan paused, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Look, I know you, dude. You always do this.”

“Do what? I’m not doing anything.” Kyle said.

“You tend to do drastic shit when you don’t talk.”

“I told you, I don’t _want_ to talk about it!”

“And I’m telling you, you should!”

“Okay; I’m fucking pissed!” Kyle felt himself explode, the anger he had been suppressing washing over him. “Is that what you wanted to hear? I went a thousand miles away for college, and I’m still treated like freaking garbage by a Cartman. I’m so fucking sick of it!”

Kyle couldn’t stand the understanding look Stan was giving him, so he turned and looked out of the windshield instead.

“Who the hell does something like that? I’m so angry I don’t even know where to start. And it’s not just her. I’m so fucking mad at myself. I’ve known Cartman for, what, fifteen years? How could I not recognize it in her?”

“Dude… You sure you’re angry?”

Kyle felt himself deflate at the question, already feeling what was coming next, but not wanting to acknowledge it.

His silence was apparently all the answer Stan needed.

“Cause you look more upset than angry to me.”

Kyle deflated. “Yeah? Well, I don’t want to be.”

“Because being angry is easier?”

Sometimes Kyle really hated that Stan got so good with emotions over the years.

“It just hurts, dude.”

He felt Stan’s hand on his shoulder for just a second, before the engine revved and they were on their way again, leaving Kyle to his thoughts.

Elayne.

Up till now, Kyle had avoided saying, or even thinking her name, but Stan was right. It was his avoidance of dealing with situations that got him into these sorts of messes. He refused to tell Stan when Heidi had dumped him, manipulated by Cartman. He distanced himself from Stan when that whole “list” thing happened. He always pulled back from his best friend when he got overwhelmed by emotion. Even telling Stan and Kenny about the girl that had simply walked into his life and claimed a spot as if it had been reserved for her, had taken him a month.

She inserted herself into his life so casually, he should have known something was up. The interaction between them was just a tad too smooth, her style of flirting was so alike Kenny’s that he dead-panned without even thinking about it. It wasn’t until Stan pointed it out that Kyle even considered he was into her.

They were silent the rest of the way back. When they parked, Stan noted that Kenny’s car was gone while he usually took the bus to work. Elayne was nowhere to be found.

Kyle felt numb as he started packing his bag for his flight, early next morning. He wanted to be mad at Stan for taking his anger away from him, but he realised that he didn’t want to be angry with Elayne. That he wanted to believe when she said that she didn’t know he was leaving Stanford.

Honestly, that made him pissed at himself all over again.

He ended up playing a hack and slash game and preparing for the next semester. It wasn’t until Kenny dropped on the couch next to him with two large pizza boxes that he felt his stomach growl. Stan dropped on his other side, strangely silent.

“Alrighty,” Kenny said, clearly gearing up to something, “Stanny-boy here tells me you’ve already got all the righteous fury out.” Kyle shot Kenny a glare, but the latter just grinned and continued. “Now, what are you gonna do about it?”

Kyle shrugs and turns back to his book. “Cut my losses, move on.”

“Dude…” Kyle didn’t need to look at Kenny to know he’d raised his eyebrows.

“What?” Kyle said, turning a page, pretending to read. “It worked with Heidi.”

The silence that followed eventually pulled Kyle’s eyes toward Kenny, who was frowning now.

“Two things,” he said, holding two fingers up, before dropping one, “One, anyone could see Heidi was a lost cause at that point,—”

“Kinda hard to miss.”

“ –and two.” The second finger came back up. “You didn’t even try to talk to Elayne. You might as well give her a chance to explain.”

Kyle scoffed.

“Yeah, I bet she can explain the entire thing,” he said, “she’ll explain it so well, that at the end of the conversation, it will have me feeling like it was all my fault instead. That is what that family does, right?”

Kenny looked like he wanted to say something, but Kyle didn’t give him a chance. “I know she doesn’t seem like the type to do that, but Fatass also knows how to play nice when he needs to.”

Stan and Kenny let him ramble on, knowing that when Kyle got going, it was impossible to stop him, and Kyle knew they were just waiting for him to run out of steam. At some point he stood up and started pacing through the room. It wasn’t until his pacing slowed down that Stan spoke up.

“I agree with Kenny.”

Kyle stopped in his tracks. “What?”

Stan shrugged. “I think you need to talk to her, give her a chance to explain, properly, what happened.”

“Besides, you have enough experience with Cartman to know if she tries to bullshit you,” Kenny added, “she probably knows that as well, which lowers the chances of her even trying it. She sure as hell didn’t try it with me.”

“You talked to her?” Kyle asked, cocking an eyebrow.

Kenny raised his eyebrows in response. “I had a crying girl on my living room floor. What was I supposed to do? Kick her out wearing only your boxers and hoody? I mean she looked good in it but that’s just a no-go man.”

“What did she say?” Kyle asked, looking at Kenny as if he had all the answers suddenly.

“Oh, no. I don’t think so, dude,” Stan interrupted. “If you want to hear her side of the story, go ask her, don’t make Kenny the middle man.”

After that Kyle let himself be talked back into a somewhat calmer state. He wasn’t sure if he was ready to listen calmly just yet, and his own flight back to California was early the next morning.

They eventually watched a random movie while eating reheated pizza and left for bed early.

Kyle couldn’t sleep though. His pillow smelled faintly of perfume and he kept twisting and turning. At 5 am, he heard Kenny get up and get ready for his morning shift, figuring he might as well get up himself.

He pulled the first sweater in his reach over his head, not bothering with pants. As he walked over to the door, Kyle felt like the smell in his bed was following him. Damn, she really got to him, didn’t she?

Kenny was making coffee in the kitchen area.

“You’re up early, can’t sl--” Kenny broke of mid-sentence to snort as he looked over at Kyle.

“What?” Kyle asked, wondering what the hell he could have done that was funny since leaving the guest room.

“Dude, that’s the hoody Elayne was wearing yesterday,” Kenny said, while pointing at Kyle’s chest.

Kyle looked down to see that he was indeed wearing the hoody Elayne had been wearing the morning before, at least it explained the scent.

Kyle shrugged. “I didn’t turn on the light when I grabbed it.”

Kenny regarded him for a few seconds before turning and pouring a cup of coffee for Kyle.

“So, why are you up at this ungodly hour?” Kenny asked.

Kyle folded his fingers around the cup and stared into its depths. “Thoughts won’t leave me alone.”

“Anything I can help you work through in the next,” Kenny tapped his phone to look at the time, “25 minutes?”

Kyle wasted a good 5 minutes just staring at his coffee and sipping it before he started talking, time in which Kenny devoured a bowl of cereal.

“I keep seeing her face as she told me she wasn’t in Denver to get me to sleep with her,” he said eventually, “I just don’t know what to make of it. I want to believe it, I really do, but whenever I try, my brain comes up with all sorts of scenarios where this was all part of some elaborate plan.”

Kyle looked up at Kenny, his eyes begging him to somehow tell him he was wrong, that there were no elaborate plans. That he was just thinking himself into a corner. Kenny apparently got the message.

“You didn’t hear the entire conversation, Ky, running into Cartman here definitely was a surprise for her, an unwelcome one,” Kenny said softly, before picking up his dishes and putting them in the sink.

They fell into a long silence, in which Kenny went to get dressed and brushed his teeth. On his way out the door to work, he put his hand on Kyle’s shoulder.

“You’ll figure it out.”

A few hours later, as Kyle was waiting to board his plane, he was _not_ figuring it out. He kept feverously texting both Stan and Kenny, who seemed to be on the verge of giving up. Just before Kyle switched his phone to airplane mode, he got one last string of messages from Kenny.

[08:25 – From: Kenny] _I wasnt gonna to send u this, since its a serious invasion of privacy……but u arent getting anywhere anytime soon like this._

[08:25 – From: Kenny] _Image._

Kyle hovered his thumb over the image for a few seconds before quickly downloading it and putting his phone on airplane mode, but since one of the flight attendants was giving him a disapproving look, he didn’t open it until he was well up in the sky. It was a screenshot of a chat, dated to the 31st of December and the 1st of January.

[19:22 – To Katy D] _I made up my mind_

[19:23 – To Katy D] _I am going to tell Kyle everything._

[20:35 – From Katy D] _I knew you would make the right decision! Now go enjoy that stupid party, there’s bound to be some nice people there!_

[00:05 – From Katy D] _HAPPY NEW YEAR!_

[07:35 – From Katy D] Elayne, _you okay? Haven’t heard from you since yesterday._

[08:42 – From Katy D] _I heard from Kyle’s roommate that he went to Denver as well. Please tell me you didn’t do anything stupid last night_

Kyle frowned at the texts, Kenny wasn’t kidding when he said it was an invasion of privacy. His eyes drifted to the time stamp of the first two messages, before opening his own chat with Elayne. She had sent him the text that she wanted to talk just two minutes after she sent these texts to Katy.

Kyle spent the rest of his flight thinking of what to do.


End file.
